Build Your Altars - The Altar of Love

Have you ever really thought about how important love is in your life? Whether it's love for God, or love for others, or love for self. Love is what motivates each and every one of us.
If we love God, and I mean truly love Him, our life's goal will be to serve Him. We serve Him by following His commandments. Jesus spoke about this in John 14:15:

"If ye love me, keep my commandments."

The point is that if we are motivated by our love, we will have no problem following the instructions laid down for us in God's Word. If we love Him, we won't look at the Bible as a book of "dos" and "don'ts". Rather we will see it as a book of instructions on how to please the God we love.
And He deserves our love and service. I mean think about what He did for us in His love. Think about this verse from John 3:16:

"16For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life."

He gave us His only Son so that we could be saved. That's some pretty amazing love. Don't you think that a God who loved us that much deserves our love in return? I sure do.
But it isn't enough to say that we love Him. We must show our love. First off we must show our love by building a relationship with Him.
If I said that I loved my brother and sister yet never spent any time with them, pretty soon they'd begin to doubt my love. Relationships grow stronger by time spent together.
If we never pray and speak to God or read His Word to hear what He has to say, pretty soon our relationships will be in a bad place. We must show our love by keeping those lines of communication active.
Secondly we can show our love by applying what we've learned. We must allow God's Word to change us because we know that in His love, He would never ask anything of us that would be for anything other than our good.
Thirdly, we must allow our love to lead us to service. Do you remember Jesus' talk with Peter in John 21? Jesus kept asking if Peter loved Him?
Peter said, "Lord, You know that I love You."
Jesus' response to Peter's assurance of love was this, "Feed my lambs."
If we truly love Jesus the way that we say we do, we will do His work. Whether that means teaching a Sunday School class, or singing in the choir, or preaching, or going to the foreign mission field, the list could go on and on. Each and every one of us has some ability that we can use for Him. The question is do we love Him enough to use those abilities?
The altar of love is important to each Christian life. We can look back to that altar to remember all that God did for us in His love, and it will inspire us to do more and more out of our love for Him.