Loving You Is Easy

"If you love me, you will keep my commandments."

John 14:15 (NAB)


Reading in 1 John 5:3 this morning, I could hear a song playing in my mind I felt that the Lord had quickened there knowing it would lead me on a journey into my Bible that would shine fresh light on His most amazing love for you and me today. As I read the passage in 1 John, "For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments. And His commandments are not burdensome" I was reminded that love might be burdened but love is never burdensome. This is where the song, "Loving You Is Easy" came to mind.

For God, loving you is easy because His very nature is love. 1 John affirms this truth when John writes, "God is love." In other words God can't help but love as love is not just what He does, it's who He is! Do you realize today that God has always loved you, even before you were born? He has and believe it or not, there has never been a moment in eternity that God has not loved us. As mind blowing as that thought is, we receive it by faith and with joy accept it. After all, He is God, and everything He does is out of this world.

But what about us? Have you considered today that loving God and loving others was to be easy too? That's exactly what John is writing here in his epistle and what Jesus said in John's Gospel as well. Loving you is easy because as John puts it, love is not burdensome. When we became followers of Jesus we became followers of the One who loves in all He does. Jesus put it like this in John 14:15, "If you love Me, you will keep my commandments." Did you catch that? Jesus said we 'will' keep His commandments if we love Him. Jesus statement wasn't a demand on us, but rather it was a promise to us. Love and obedience go hand in hand.

The point is this. When you love someone, I mean when you really love someone, you want to please them, and you have no problem putting their desires above your own. That's what the numerous songs sharing the same title, "Loving You Is Easy" all seek to convey. That's what God's kind of love communicates too. Just look at the Cross where Jesus gave His life for you and me. Some might say the Cross wasn't easy and thats painfully true but what was easy was the love that motivated and lead Jesus to go to the Cross in the first place. "Loving You Is Easy" is how Jesus went about every day of His earthly life and John not only witnessed it for Himself but He was a recipient and was transformed by Jesus love.

Keep this in mind today. When we receive Christ, we receive His love too, and as Jesus love grows in us and we grow in Him, His love shapes our thoughts and deeds in the same way love shaped His own. That's why John reminds us that the commands of God aren't burdensome to us because the burdens we bear for God and others we do in love. Now it makes sense as to why Jesus would say, "If you love Me, you WILL keep my commandments" because His love will provide both the motivation and the strength to do so. Jesus is promising us that if we love Him, we will love others too. We can't help it. If Jesus promised us we would keep His commandments each of us can say with confidence today, "loving you is easy" as easy as being loved by God and allowing His love to flow through me and you!



"By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another."

John 13:35

I LOVE YOU!

 











Michael Osthimer

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