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Loving God.

Ernestine

Member
You can only come to know God through deep study of his word. To love and respect a person you need to know who that person really is. Study builds faith and sincere desire to worship God as he wants to be worshiped, not how we choose to worship him. Look around! Evidence of God's wisdom is seen in all his creative works. As Paul said, "We are walking by faith, not by sight." (2 Corinthians 5:7) If you love anyone (yourself, your wife, your kids, etc.) more than God then you are not worthy of him. Jesus said that he came to cause division with a man against his father and a daughter against her mother and a young wife against her mother-in-law. He that has greater affection for son or daughter than for him is not worthy of him. (Matthew 10:32-28)
 

jeffrey

†ßig Dog†
Ernestine said:
If you love anyone (yourself, your wife, your kids, etc.) more than God then you are not worthy of him. Jesus said that he came to cause division with a man against his father and a daughter against her mother and a young wife against her mother-in-law. He that has greater affection for son or daughter than for him is not worthy of him. (Matthew 10:32-28)
Well, I guess that I, nor most of the people in this forum, are worthy.
 

Sunstone

De Diablo Del Fora
Premium Member
Ernestine said:
If you love anyone (yourself, your wife, your kids, etc.) more than God then you are not worthy of him.
If I were a believer, I'd say that yourself, your wife, your kids, etc. are the works of God and that by loving them, you come to a greater understanding about God than you would come to by reading the Bible alone. After all, to rely solely on the Bible for knowledge of God is to ignore the handicraft of God that is all around us. At least, that's how I'd see it if I was a believer in the first place.
 

michel

Administrator Emeritus
Staff member
Aqualung said:
First of all - He DIDN'T kill him. It was asking him to kill him that did the good. Which is, strengthened his faith and made him think about what he was doing and why. Killing him probably would have done no good at all, which is why God told him it actually wouldn't be necessary.
I agree; I see this as the ultimate 'test' in commitment, in 'proving' his allegiance to God.
 

Ormiston

Well-Known Member
Sunstone said:
If I were a believer, I'd say that yourself, your wife, your kids, etc. are the works of God and that by loving them, you come to a greater understanding about God than you would come to by reading the Bible alone. After all, to rely solely on the Bible for knowledge of God is to ignore the handicraft of God that is all around us. At least, that's how I'd see it if I was a believer in the first place.

When I think of someone who loves God more than life itself or anything else that makes up our lives, I think of the mother from Carrie or some other psychopath who is unable to seperate his religious beliefs from reality. That type of person is frightening to me.
 

michel

Administrator Emeritus
Staff member
Ormiston said:
When I think of someone who loves God more than life itself or anything else that makes up our lives, I think of the mother from Carrie or some other psychopath who is unable to seperate his religious beliefs from reality. That type of person is frightening to me.
I nagree - a historical example was Cromwell........
 

jeffrey

†ßig Dog†
michel said:
I nagree - a historical example was Cromwell........
Not sure who Cromwell is, but I agree with you and the big O. And I can't see God being a God that would expect you too. (After reading all the posts to this thread. ). I wouldn't want to end up like that woman on trading spouses. My wife has a ringer of her now. LOL.
 

Sunstone

De Diablo Del Fora
Premium Member
Ormiston said:
When I think of someone who loves God more than life itself or anything else that makes up our lives, I think of the mother from Carrie or some other psychopath who is unable to seperate his religious beliefs from reality. That type of person is frightening to me.
I completely agree, Ormiston. Again, if I were a believer, I would find it difficult to believe that the only reason we were put on this earth, God's creation, was to reject the world and love God more than his creation. I think such a rejection can lead to fanaticism. I recall hearing on several occassions young Muslims in the Middle East saying, "We love death more than life", and implying thereby that they have a higher calling than to deal with the reality of this world. To me, that's just an escape from reality, God's creation. I sometimes wonder, if there's a Creator who judges us, whether or not at the end of our lives that Creator will not hold us accountable for how well we loved the creation he gave us.
 

AtheistAJ

Member
Victor said:
For the same reason that you may love your mom more then your friend.

~Victor
I don't think I would be able to love my mother more than my friend if I never saw her in my life.

If you or anyone else think a god would want you to kill your children or anyone else for that matter, I see no reason of worshiping "him".

When I think of someone who loves God more than life itself or anything else that makes up our lives, I think of the mother from Carrie or some other psychopath who is unable to seperate his religious beliefs from reality. That type of person is frightening to me.
I don't know who that is, but I think of Susan Smith and yes it is extremely eerie.
 

michel

Administrator Emeritus
Staff member
jgallandt said:
Not sure who Cromwell is, but I agree with you and the big O. And I can't see God being a God that would expect you too. (After reading all the posts to this thread. ). I wouldn't want to end up like that woman on trading spouses. My wife has a ringer of her now. LOL.
Sorry!


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_Cromwell

Oliver Cromwell (April 25, 1599 – September 3, 1658) was an English military leader and politician. After leading the overthrow of the British monarchy, he ruled England, Scotland, and Ireland as Lord Protector, (or, some would claim, essentially as a 'dictator'), from December 16, 1653 until his death; which is believed to have been due either to malaria or by poisoning. After his burial he was exhumed and executed

Religious beliefs

Cromwell's understanding of religion and politics were very closely intertwined. Cromwell was a committed "Puritan" Protestant, believing that salvation was open to all who obeyed the teachings of the Bible and acted according to their own (individual) conscience. He was passionately opposed to the Roman Catholic Church; which he saw as denying the 'primacy' of the Bible in favour of 'Papal' and Clerical authority, and which he blamed for 'tyranny' and 'persecution' of Protestants in Europe. For this reason, he was bitterly-opposed to Charles I's "reforms" of the Church of England, which introduced Catholic-style Bishops and Prayer Books, in place of Bible study. Cromwell's feelings of association between Catholicism and persecution were deepened with the Irish Rebellion of 1641, which were marked by massacres (wildly-exaggerated in Puritan circles in Britain) by Irish Catholics of English and Scottish Protestant settlers. This would later be one of the reasons why Cromwell acted so harshly in his later military campaign in Ireland.

Cromwell was also opposed to the more radical religious groups on the Protestant side of the Civil Wars. Although he co-operated with Quakers and Presbyterians, Cromwell was opposed to their authoritarian imposition of their beliefs upon other Protestants. He became associated with the "Independent" faction, which argued for religious freedom for all Protestants in a post-war settlement.

Finally, Cromwell was also a firm believer in "Providentialism" - the belief that God was actively directing the affairs of the world, through the actions of 'chosen people' (whom God had "provided" for such purposes). Cromwell believed, during the Civil Wars, that he was one of these people, and he interpreted victories as indications of God's approval of his actions, and defeats as signs that God was directing him in another direction.

The Oxford historian Christopher Hill has written a semi-popular account of his influential studies in this area in 'God's Englishman' (Penguin, 1970)
 
jgallandt said:
The Bible says to love God with all your heart, all your soul and all your mind. How? I mean, I love God (and Jesus), but not with all my heart soul and mind. I love my wife more. I love my kids more. And I feel guilty for this. How can you love God so much when you never see him? I see his works, and love what he has done for me. But I don't feel I love him like I Am supposed to. Can anyone truthfully say that they love God more then their own kids our the person they live with? (Married or not)
It's a feeling, not a thought.
 
jvi said:
God is the spirit of truth.Love truth with all of your heart mind and soul.
Feelings are not assignmemts, or lists of "have to do's". That's fake, and you are fooling yourself. Been there, done that. Try pleasing your neighbors. Say "hello" to an elderly person, to children, in that order. Actually, the truly actualized individual begins with self, family, neighbors, strangers (which includes animals and all of nature). This pleases God, and everyone smiles, even the stars.
 

nutshell

Well-Known Member
I think it means you put God first in your life and everything else will fall into place. Afterall, will a person who has truly put God first do anything that would harm his wife or children? I don't think so. I think he will actually put his wife and children on a pedastal and serve them with all his heart, might, mind, and strength.
 
nutshell said:
I think it means you put God first in your life and everything else will fall into place. Afterall, will a person who has truly put God first do anything that would harm his wife or children? I don't think so. I think he will actually put his wife and children on a pedastal and serve them with all his heart, might, mind, and strength.
And if one puts God first in one's life, what do you suppose that involves? Begins with an "s"... ends with an "e"... is 9 letters. Okay, the word is sacrifice. The whole being aspect of loving god has to do with looking at all those things that one "was" doing that were not all so healthy. For instance, what we eat, how we prepare food, how one relates to table manners. Food consumption is one of the essential areas of where relationship values are established. Oh yeah, healing and God are connected concepts. But one has to be flexible to change with all this; I mean very flexible, like takes your whole being, the parts of yourself that you don't even know yet. So there's an adventure aspect to this, except anger and fear get dropped out. Okay, I'm pooped.
 
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