Loving God Within and Without

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God’s Law teaches us to love Him entirely.

Deuteronomy 6.4-9

“Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.”

Like Israel of old, believers in Jesus Christ have been redeemed unto good works (Eph. 2.8-10); we show our love for God by studying to learn and working to practice all He describes as expressions of speech and word that are consistent with love for Him. Certainly if we love God with all our soul, from within, it will be easier to love Him with our strength, for what we do will effectively and efficiently flow from the kind of people we are.

Similarly, as we show love for God in words and deeds, such practices reinforce our inward convictions, making us firmer and more convinced of the love we have for God in our inner being, and, thus, more likely to show that love consistently in our lives. A symbiosis of inward and outward transformation, oriented around and motivated by pure love for God, thus brings the commandments of God – holy and righteous and good – into flesh before the watching world.

Order a copy of The Law of God from our online store, and begin daily reading in the commandments, statutes, testimonies, precepts, and rules of God, which are the cornerstone of divine revelation. Sign up at our website to receive our thrice-weekly devotional, Crosfigell, written by T. M. Moore.

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In the Gates is a devotional series on the Law of God by Rev. T.M. Moore, editor of the Worldview Church. He serves as dean of the Centurions Program of the Wilberforce Forum and principal of The Fellowship of Ailbe, a spiritual fellowship in the Celtic Christian tradition. He is the author or editor of twenty books, and has contributed chapters to four others. His essays, reviews, articles, papers, and poetry have appeared in dozens of national and international journals, and on a wide range of websites. His most recent books are The Ailbe Psalter and The Ground for Christian Ethics (Waxed Tablet).

Scripture quotations in this article are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version, (c) copyright 2001, 2007 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

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