Do You Love God?

Jesus said the greatest commandment is to love God with all your heart mind and soul. Do you love God? Jesus also said that if you love me you will keep my commandments. So in order to love God you must keep His commandments. It is that simple.

So the answer to the question; Do you love God? is answered by your keeping His commandments. Thus it stands to reason that the degree to which you keep the commandments is the degree to which you love God.

What commandments are Christians to keep? I could not list them all but let's start with a few.

1. The 10 commandments

2. Being baptized

3. Attending a Bible believing, Bible preaching church

4. Tithing

5. Witnessing, ministering to others

6. Abstaining from sexual immorality

7. Abstaing from worldy practices; smoking, drinking alcohol, rock music, unwholesome TV, movies, internet.

In my mind I can hear some people reacting to this calling me a legalist because I say it is wrong to do this or that as a Christian all under the guise that we are under "grace." Yes as Christians we are free, but not free to sin. As Christians we are responsible for all of our actions and if we sin there will be a consequence to pay.

Some Christians I have met feel that they are free to do whatever they want as long as scripture does not literally say no. For example they say it is OK to smoke because scripture does not say "thou shalt not smoke." I call these Christians "Outback" Christians--"no rules, just right." These Christians unfortunately are justifing licentiousness because they fail to realize that a Christian is responsible to obey all the commandments of scripture whether they are literal or are derived by principle.

For example; it is clearly wrong to smoke because it violates several principles of scripture--our body is a temple of the Holy Spirit thus we should not do anything to intentionally harm our body.

So what does this have to do with the end times? One of the things we need to do to get ready for the end times and the Lord's return is to remove sinful practices from our life. I have been in the ministry for over 20 years and I have seen a lot of destroyed families and children because the parents allowed harmful things into their home, like rock music, alcohol, evil books, movies and video games.

I have seen too many destroyed lives and families because of the "grace" movement. A Christian must obey all the commandments and principles of scripture. To escape this obligation stating that we are under grace is a grievous error.

If you love Me you will keep my commandments.