Perhaps, when I ask that, you’re response is one of being positive that you could make a list with plenty of things that might beat-out God’s love in the energy-producing department. But, let’s test that thinking. Your assumption may not be as secure as you think. God’s love may appear to have very little going for it in the competition for your heart, but perhaps this is because you don’t quite understand the worth of this treasure.
If you have thought for most of your life that including God in your life was supposed to be a drag, His love cannot possibly be a blessing to you. In fact, you will not even be able to KNOW His love if you perceive Him only as a drain to all your resources and ambitions. God never meant for you to see Him that way. His presence in our lives is meant to be a gift; more than that, because of what Christ did to make God’s presence in our life possible, it is a privilege. But this privilege is not to be equated with those thinly-veiled responsibilities that no one really wants to be given.
God’s presence is meant to be a pleasure; it really can be! The reality for you to consider today is that if you are not experiencing God’s presence as a pleasure, you cannot truly be experiencing His presence. To actually know God–for who He is according to His unchangingly perfect character–is to know boundless joy. Conversely, to regard all the negative and untrue press-releases that Satan manufactures about God is to know absolutely no genuine joy.
That’s a big deal. Don’t miss out on the implications here. In this debate concerning God being our Friend or Foe, His personal leaning is not the main focus; what you choose to listen to is. If you tune your heart into what the world tells you about how you should handle God in your life will never be in short supply, yet neither can it be trusted.
The world’s ambition is to get YOU to choose not to be God’s friend. The enemy of your love for God is not uncertain about the state of God’s love for and commitment to you. The person in question is you. And his goal is to “help” you decide that you don’t want to have any part of the God who pursues you–not based on what is True but on what he can get you to feel and think according to the lies he twists.
It is dangerous to not be aware that his words about God come to us through any voice that he can get to speak for him. Therefore, we should not take anyone’s word on God above God’s own Word on Himself. Find out what that says first. Ask God to make it sink into you and take up root, becoming a living part of you that shades your thinking and fills your heart with the fruit of His goodness. Then you will become acquainted with the unceasing, and energizing benefits of His love that cannot be equalled in all the earth.
At Home with God 