Love God First

"Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love. In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him. Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another. No man hath seen God at any time. If we love one another, God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us. And we have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him. We love him, because he first loved us." (1 John 4:7-12, 16, 18). We love God because He first loved us. He showed us the way. Christ forgave the Roman soldiers in the very moment they were driving nails into His hands and feet. He ate with publicans and sinners. He condemned not the adultress. He did not pass by on the other side when He found someone in need of healing on the Sabbath day. He suffered to infinity and beyond to save our souls and then He died so that we all might live. We love Him, because He first loved us. And I would add to this that we must love Him first, before we can love anyone or anything else at all. There is a reason that the first and great Commandment is to love God. God is love. Trying to love without God is like trying to breathe without air. When we choose to love God, we allow Him to enter and dwell in our hearts. Having the love of God inside our hearts changes us. It makes us bolder, wiser, kinder, gentler, more trusting, more compassionate, more hopeful. When we love God first, we can then more perfectly love ourselves and love one another. If we are struggling to love either ourselves or our husbands and wives, parents and children, brothers and sisters, friends and enemies, we must ask ourselves if we have first sought to love God. We can't fix what's broken inside ourselves or between us and someone else until we first let God into our hearts. As we dwell in God's love, we allow God to dwell in our hearts and our love becomes perfected and His love becomes perfected in us. It may be strange to consider, but we exert the exact same gravitational force on the earth as the earth exerts on us. For every foot pound of force the earth pulls on us, we pull back on the earth just as much. It is the same with the love of God. As much as God's love draws us to Him, we have to draw Him to us with our love. He gives us His love, we share and multiply it out to others, and they give it back to us and we give it back to God and this ever expanding positive feedback loop reverberates out from God to us to our neighbors back and forth getting bigger and warmer and brighter and purer Ave sweeter all the time, until our hearts are all knit together in one brilliant, glorious, perfect tapestry of love between us and God and all of His children.