Have you ever contemplated what it means to love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength? What does it look like when you do this since true, agape-type love is not an emotion but caring, self-sacrificing actions on behalf of the one loved? In a recent Sunday School lesson I believe I got a glimpse of what it means. The lesson was about the comfort believers receive from God and how we are to comfort others with the comfort we received from Him.

Others include our fellow man, whom we are charged by God to love – not only our family and friends but our neighbor – even our enemy. That we are to comfort our unknown neighbor and our enemy is what will make believers different and is an awesome view of God’s love. But, I still have not arrived at my point.

Included among those whom we are to love is God Himself. In fact, we are to love Him above all – the 1st and most important commandment of the Bible. So, taking from our lesson to comfort those we love – here it is – a new thought – at least to me – we ought to comfort God! Wow! Does that even make sense? Does God need our comfort and, if so, how could we possibly do it?

As we explored the meaning of the word “comfort” in our lesson, we arrived at this – that comfort is relief from something bad. So, what is bad for God? Probably more than we can think of, but here are a few: our sin- it saddens and disappoints him, loss of a person whom Christ died for to hell, in-fighting among Christians, people denying He even exists, His chosen people’s (Israel’s) rejection of their Messiah, our refusal to repent when we mess up and sin, our incomplete trust in Him when He is 100% trustworthy, our pain and suffering even though it is part and parcel of being a human in the physical world, the death of a loved one as we remember how Christ wept at Lazarus’ death and on and on we can go.

So, does it not now become obvious how we can comfort God and by so doing we truly love Him? Taking the list of bad things above in order: we can stop sinning and commit to obeying God’s word – at least genuinely try to do our best with His help, we can equip ourselves to share the gospel with others to do our part in keeping any fellow human from hell, we can make it one of our missions to promote unity within the church, we can become a defender of our faith – able to explain to the unbelieving evidence that God exists and why Christianity is true, we can show we care for Jewish followers of Judaism by sharing the other Jewish view of today that Jesus is their long-awaited Messiah – how – buy and give them the book “Betrayed” by converted Jew Stan Telchin, we can readily confess to God in contrite attitude when we sin and ask for forgiveness, we can choose to have 100% trust in God because He is 100% trustworthy, we can comfort and help others who are experiencing pain and suffering, we can help others get well or see that they get the medical help they need rather than not caring whether they live or die, I’m sure you can add to the list.

Do you see? This is a way, if not the way, to truly love God – DOING those things that give HIM comfort!

Sincerely,
Dennis Christian