If you love me, keep my commands

Call To Prayer

Title: If you love me, keep my commands

By: Njuacha Hubert

Date: 01.03.2025

23 Jesus replied, “Anyone who loves me will obey my teaching. My Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them. 24 Anyone who does not love me will not obey my teaching. These words you hear are not my own; they belong to the Father who sent me.    John 14:23

If you have ever loved any thing or anyone you will probably agree that love makes all burdens light. If you love your job, it becomes easier. If you love someone, you want to please them. Love makes sacrificing much easier ! This is why Jesus says in the opening verse that if you love me you will keep my commands. 

Not only is keeping Jesus’s commands (which is summarised in love) a demonstration of our love for God but also a consequence of our love for God. So my emphasis today is to remind us to develop our love for Jesus. Because that love for Jesus empowers us to keep His commands. 

Keeping aside love as an instruction from Jesus, we naturally don’t love people that we don’t know. But when you know someone and see the beauty in them, the goodness in them, then you start to love them naturally. Similarly, the more we know Jesus, who He is, what He has done for us, the more we can love Him. 

For example, did you know that Jesus’s sacrifice for us didn’t just start at the cross of calvary. I believe you have been tempted and know how painful it is at times to resist temptation. The bible says Jesus was tempted in every way as you and I, yet did not sin (Hebrews 4:15). It means for 33 years, every temptation, Jesus said “no, I will remain pure, I have to be pure to be a perfect sacrifice” (just imagining to give us perspective). 

The song titled “Above All” by Michael W.Smith has the line “you lived to die, rejected and alone”. All this so that you and I who believe can have eternal life (John 3:16), abundant blessings in Christ Jesus (Ephesians 1:3), access to Grace to live righteously that leads to glory, (Philippians 4:13, Romans 8:17, Luke 11:27-28) and more.

To conclude, we grow in our love for Jesus as we know him more and more through the word, personal fellowship, praying in tongues, worship songs and every other means He uses to reveal Himself to us. As we love him we can then love others in His name. 

Prayers Point: 

Let’s thank God for the word. May God help us to see how much He has done for us. To love others in His name. To also focus in the good in others not their weaknesses.