After a weekend away on holiness at home and with friends,
how are we doing? Back home for a couple of weeks and already struggling to hold
your tongue with your mum? Turned back into the grumpy, sofa-loving teenager of
old? Returned to the same dubious habits with friends? Ask yourself this
question: “who do you love?”
In John 14:15, Jesus says ‘If you love me, you will obey
what I command.’ Who do you love? A holy life is a life of love – love for
Jesus, who died to give us life! And your love for him will be plain to see as
you obey his commands.
The problem is it’s hard. It’s all too easy to love
ourselves, the football or our iphones and obey them. A couple of weeks into
the holiday and we may be close to giving up. Here are 3 encouragements to keep
us going:
1) Sometimes it’s hard to answer that question ‘who do you
love?’. Jesus is not always the obvious answer. And when that’s the case we
stop obeying him. Well, turn to him in prayer and listen to him speak to you in
his Word. How has your Bible reading been since the change of routine back
home? Cultivate your relationship with him, love him, and you will obey his
commands.
2) Left to us obedience would be impossible. But we need not
be defeatist because God is at work in us. Wonderfully, we are not alone! Jesus
goes on to say that he will ask His Father to give us ‘the Spirit of truth’
(v17a) who will live in us (v17c) and be with us forever (v16) teaching us the
way of godliness (v26). We have the Spirit working in us. Keep working at
obeying Jesus because we know God himself is at work in us by his Spirit.
3) We also have friends to help us in the fight. Friends
from Emmanuel, CU, home churches or camp. Hebrews 10:24 says ‘let us consider
how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds’. We all need friends
to spur us on to love Jesus more and obey his commands. Are we being that kind
of friend? Our Christian friends need us to be. So why not pick up your copy of
the church summer book True Friendship? See
what it looks like to be a good friend and to spur one another on. And as we do
that our lives will show that there can only be one answer to that question
‘who do you love?’ Jesus Christ.
If you missed it at the weekend away or at Emmanuel, get your copy of True
Friendship here.
