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Why Do We Love God? When Do We Love Him?

love God

We Must Adore the Almighty Regardless of Our Circumstances

It’s easy to love God when things go well. When our lives are great and we receive his blessings, we can thank him, praise him, and appreciate his goodness. It’s easy to love him when life is good.

However, life isn’t always so good. Sometimes our lives are a mess. When we don’t receive God’s blessings or experience his favor, do we still love him?

We should, but our situation makes it much harder. In fact, for some people hardship turns their love of the Almighty into blaming him.

Although understandable, this isn’t right.

Love God Because

When we love our Creator during the good times, we may be loving him because of what he’s done for us. We love him for his favor. We love him for his blessings. We love him because he’s benevolent.

Love God Despite

But when we’re going through difficult times, we must love him too. This is much harder to do, but we must press forward to love him, despite our circumstances. He deserves our love regardless of our situation.

How Does Job Relate to God?

In the Bible, Job, at first, has every reason to love his Creator because of what he did for Job. And when it’s all taken away from Job, he has every reason to turn from God and blame him. But he doesn’t.

Though the Bible doesn’t say that Job loves God, it does imply this when we see Job steadfastly affirming God for who he is, despite the turmoil he undergoes. This isn’t a gushy, emotional love.

It’s an intentional, push-through-the-hard-times effort to give God what he deserves: our resolute devotion despite our circumstances.

Job’s wife condemns him for maintaining his affirmation of God, his love for his creator. She says, “To end your suffering, just curse God and then die (Job 2:9). Job doesn’t agree.

Despite what he’s going through, he doesn’t blame God (Job 1:22 and Job 2:10).

Though the way we show God we love him may vary with our circumstances, we must always love him. It’s easy to love him because of what he does for us, but we must also love him despite what we’re going through.

[Read through the Bible with us this year. Today’s reading is Job 1-4, and today’s post is on Job 2:9.]

Discover more about Job in Peter’s book I Hope in Him: 40 Insights about Moving from Despair to Deliverance through the Life of Job. In it, we compare the text of Job to a modern screenplay.

Peter DeHaan writes about biblical Christianity to confront status quo religion and live a life that matters. He seeks a fresh approach to following Jesus through the lens of Scripture, without the baggage of made-up traditions and meaningless practices.

Read more in his books, blog, and weekly email updates.

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