How You Know That You Love God
(February 15, 2002; Modified  December 2003)

   

“…offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually, that is, the fruit of our lips giving thanks to His name” (Hebrews 13:15 ).  

Knowing that you love God is evidenced by Hebrews 13:15.  The Lord wants His people to adore Him, that is, show above utmost love and respect for Him by blessing Him with praises steadily coming from your lips – pouring forth from your hearth/spirit.  He wants His people to reverence His name because He is The Lord and is not associated with evil nor worthlessness.  As His people, you are to know that when He is called upon, it is for spiritual appearance.  The Lord’s spiritual appearance is always when the lips of His people are giving thanks to His name, in the spirit.  

The fruit of your lips giving thanks to His name is when you are in isolation with The Lord – in your prayer closet, and it’s not you, but your spirit being man takes over in the prayer time by saying something like,  

“God I thank You Father; I thank You Jesus.”

“God I thank You Lord; God I thank You Jesus.”

“Oh God, I love You; I love You Father.”

“I love You Lord; Oh Jesus, I need You.”  

This goes on and on and on, and you cannot stop it.  You have absolutely no control over this – and you don’t dare even think about quenching this most beautiful time in your present life form.  It is genuine ecstasy!  Before you know it, an hour or more has past while doing this alone and your carnal mind has not been at the helm.  

At this stage you’re no longer coming from your soul realm – your mind, thinking of thanking Him and thus vocalizing it, but it’s your spirit man spontaneously thanking Him and telling Him of your love for Him.  Meantime, in your mind you’re trying to figure out why you keep thanking God – which one of your many beseeching prayers did He just answer?  That’s not it at all but it is your spirit genuinely glorifying God in the truest sense.  This goes on for a long period each time you go into prayer, especially when you’re in early morning prayer.  

As you become more and more broken and willing, and willfully spending more time in your prayer closet, your spirit graduates to uncontrollable love-talk to God (“I love you Lord;  Lord, I love you.  I love you Jesus”) and it is coupled with uncontrollable weeping of dry tears. (The tears are very rarely manifested as water in your eyes and rolling down your face.)  Saints, if you’re not at this place, something is lacking in your walk.  

Yes, there’s something lacking in your walk with Jesus.  It’s called, “you’re not walking with Him in the spirit.”  You’re saying to yourself, “it’s different for everybody.”  At this stage in the Christian walk, it is not different for everybody.  It is all hearts/spirits in one accord because this is the reward He has for His people as they dwell in this earthly body with the Father and the Son making Their abode in them.  This is the Holy One inhabiting the praises of His people whose hearts/spirits are after Him.  

There is meant to be such excitement in you about the Lord that you’re bubbling over to the point that you blush when you share with others about His loving kindness and infinite goodness.  If you claim to be a Truly Born-Again Spirit-filled Uncompromising Christian (TBSUC), and you have not experienced Hebrews 13:15 at this point in your walk, something is terribly wrong.  

If You’re Not At That Place, It’s Because…  

You are not “bought-out and sold-out” to Jesus!  You’re not one after God’s own heart! You don’t have a perfect heart for God because you haven’t made up your mind to want to be holy for Him in all your words, thoughts, and your deeds.  You’re not sold-out to Him because you don’t completely trust Him to be your Jehovah Jireh your provider, nor your Jehovah Raphah your healer (it is easier and faster to first look to the arms of man for provision and healing).  You don’t have a perfect heart for God because you don’t have a tender or soft heart for Him – hating sin, that is.  

You can know that you’re beginning to get to that Hebrews 13:15 place when you experience immediate displeasure at sin operating in the lives of others in the Church and in the rest of the world.  (This is anger, yes, but this type of anger is justified and is not sin.  Anger is sin when it is irrational – unfounded or groundless, or even without a cause.)  A perfect heart for God has just anger in it and it is directed at that which is disobedient and irreverent toward Him.  

Interjection:  (1) Moses’ anger when he returned to the camp and found God’s people dancing around an idol they’d turned to for their god (Exodus 32:17-23) was not sinful because Moses, as you should be, was jealous for God in that He wanted all the reverence and obedience in the world for his God.  This is “just” anger that should be in all who possess a perfect heart for God. (2) As Jesus was justifiably angry at the irreverence in the house of God by the moneychangers and subsequently overthrew the tables (Matthew 21:12 -13).  You, today’s Church, instead welcome into the sanctuary the dramatizations, the contemporary Christian music concerts, the false prophets, etc.  You welcome in the church buildings, bookstores, health clubs, and coffee shops.  Jesus had a perfect heart for God and His “just anger” was just one of the identifying marks of peculiar people that is evident of a perfect heart for God.  The Lord wants His people to get to that place in their Christian walk.  

You don’t have a perfect heart for God because you don’t keep His Commandments and you don’t hate evil.  You think the commandments – God’s Law,  went when Jesus went.  Jesus said,  

            If ye love me, keep my commandments (John 14:15 ).  

Commandments means all of His Commandments; all of His Word – His Law. You say you love God but you don’t show Him your love when you don’t obey His Commandments. If you love Him, you will surrender your vessel to living holy and righteous by letting Christ live His life in you to the fullest so that you can be in the Hebrews 13:15 position.  

Search Yourself For What Is Wrong  

If you’re not experiencing Hebrews 13:15 at this stage of your Christian walk, you have to ask yourself  (1) if you are totally surrendered to Him – have submitted “your all” to Him and come to an end of running your own show; (2) if you are indisputably Holy Ghost baptized (book of Acts is in your life); (3) if you are truly humble before God and mankind; (4) if you are totally obedient to His commandments; and (5) if you passionately hate sin. Put the spotlight on self, repent of your spiritual malfunction(s), and let the Holy Ghost go about His business of bringing you to the place whereby you have a perfect heart for God – one who is after God’s own heart.  

To Get To That Place, It Must Be Your Voluntary Choice  

“If his offering be a burnt sacrifice of the herd, let him offer a male without blemish: he shall offer it of his own voluntary will at the door of the tabernacle of the congregation before the LORD (Leviticus 1:3).  

Any sacrifice before God must be voluntary, including you personally.  The sacrifice is offered to God as the submission of the will – freely – voluntarily.  God won’t make you make the sacrifice of your life to His dedication; He didn’t “make” Jesus make the ultimate sacrifice of atonement for our sins.  Jesus volunteered – in His good pleasure - He willfully made up His mind to go through with that horrific death on the cross.

“…the will is the great moving, acting power of the soul (mind, will, emotions)…it lies at the foundation of moral character. Without the will we could never obey or disobey (for these words to be defined, there has to be a will) any Divine command. We could never do anything, good or evil.” (Lectures on Christian Theology by Enoch Pond, D.D. Congregational Board of Publications, Boston, 1867, p. 261.)

Of your own volition, you must want God to be your life for the length of your days because that’s the only way you can have long life in peace, love, and an abundance of joy, while genuinely loving Him.  You make Him your life when you (1) keep His commandments by walking in His ways, and (2) you hold fast to Him alone, in faith.  By genuinely making Him your life, you are loving Him with all your heart, mind, soul, and might.  Here you are now, made sanctified.  You are truly devoted to God, and your glory is in the spiritual fact that you now understand and know Him: His loving kindness, His just judgment, and His righteousness in the earth (Jeremiah 9:2).  It is at this place He delights in you because you have gone fully after Him – after His own heart.

When you reach that place in your spiritual life, day-by-day and moment-by-moment you are choosing:

His lighted pathway over darkness ▪ good over evil  ▪ obedience to Him and not Satan  ▪ to do what is morally right over what is immoral  ▪  holiness over unholiness  ▪ to live for Him rather than for "self"  ▪  to hate all that is evil

You must make the choice to stop straddling the fence and go all the way with THE LORD if you want to give Him perfect praise as in Hebrews 13:15.

In Closing

It is your heart/spirit first that seeks the Lord to give Him your love, and loving Him cannot be experienced in the flesh.  Nor can this be experienced by you because of what your carnal mind perceives it to be since the Bible tells us we should love God.  In the Hebrews 13:15 blissful state, you don’t say, “I love You Lord God; I love You Jesus” without having gradually transitioned from the fleshly love/worship to the spirit. (Worship Him in spirit and in truth – John 4:23.) There are so few Christians that truly love God and generate this type worship, and anything apart from that is not acceptable to Him. Loving God, genuinely loving Him, and worshiping Him as He wants, is not just for a select few people, but it is for all who have been called to salvation.  That kind of love/worship does not differ from one person to the next, for it should be the same in all and it manifests forth the same from all – IN ONE ACCORD.

If you truly believe God’s Word, you will live it.  When you truly love Him, your life will be His Word and His Word will be your life.  You will live what you believe and your worship for your first love will be pure-spirited.  To remain in that position with God, you cannot have things in your life that will turn away your heart from Him.  As sure as you do, you will no longer have a perfect heart for Him, and there goes holiness – sanctification, for it is holiness that  hinders worldly pleasures because of the godly traits in holiness. Your heart will no longer be after Him, but after the world, the flesh, and the Devil.

Saints of God, none of this happens overnight.  It is a process and He wants to channel you through the winding and twisting roads by going ahead of you and making them straight.  Dear Saints of God, He would have you know that you should stop holding on to the things that are hindering you from getting to that place whereby your daily prayers in the spirit realm are thanksgiving and expression of love for Him.  He wants you to surrender to Him, now – broken and obedient.  He wants you to cast aside the doubt and unbelief and believe that He is who He says He is, and will do all that He says He will. If you haven’t already, seek the Acts experience for your life for it surely lives on.  (There is more to Christianity than just being Born Again.  After the Born Again experience, you and you alone have to be the one to want to love and serve God with your whole heart, mind, soul, and strength by becoming Holy Ghost baptized so that you can progress to the state of spiritual bliss in the presence of the Lord.)  Go for it!