Can you love God if you can’t see him?

Jesus said blessed are those who never see and believe. This is great faith. If you are reading this and you have put your faith in Christ without seeing him face to face, you are blessed! Jesus said so.

Can we see the wind? No. But, we see the affects of the wind. We feel the wind cool us on a stuffy summer day and we see the wind uproot trees. Even without seeing the wind, we can believe that the wind exists. It does, after all exist. We can see the power of God’s love and healing change a life in an inexplicable way and believe he exists.

But, is this faith in God the same as loving God? To do the work of God is to believe on him, truly, but, Jesus said more than that…he pointed back to the Deuteronomy scripture that says we need to Love the Lord our God with all our hearts, all our soul, all our mind and all our strength and love our neighbor as ourself.

The Greatest Commandment

Matthew 22:34 Hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees got together.35 One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question: 36 “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”

37 Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ 38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ 40 All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

Faith in God must be coupled with two things, love for God and love for our neighbors. Now, this is where it gets uncomfortable. It’s easy to say you love God or love your neighbor. But, it’s difficult to truly love your neighbor as yourself, in action, not just in words and in lofty thoughts.

Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love.

Ephesians 4:2NIV

To quote an old D.C. Talk song, “Love is a verb.” It is not just a feeling. In fact, true love continues when we have nothing else to give…including feelings.

In the same way the wind eludes us….loving God and others can elude us. We can feel the power of the love, but not understand it.

1 John 4:19 We love because he first loved us. Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen. And he has given us this command: Anyone who loves God must also love their brother and sister.

Here is the challenge of the scripture for today. How can you hate someone you see and think you can love God? It’s a very perplexing question. How can you be full of hate against a brother or sister in Christ? They belong to the Father. They are his beloved, yet you won’t forgive them? How can you truly love God who you haven’t seen?

Clearly, 1 John 4 shows us. Love needs to be perfected in us through Jesus Christ. We need to humble ourselves. Humility. Surrender. Patience. Forgiveness. Make me like you, Jesus. Fill me with your love. Teach me to love like you do, even when I disagree with people. Help me to walk in the power of the cross.