How Do You Love Jesus?

“Oh, how I love Jesus. Oh, how I love Jesus... because He first loved me."

Songwriter, Frederick Whitfield, 1859

When you were a child and first sang this simple refrain, did you understand how profound the message was? Or did it take reaching the end of your rope or the end of the road before you whispered, “Yes, Lord, I believe”? Then, what a relief when confessing His authority helped you understand that your journey only began on earth and will be complete the day you run into Jesus’ arms and declare, “My Savior, I’m home!”  

Have you told Him how thankful you are for your “about-face” and your depth of gratitude that He turned your life around? That’s good, but mere words don’t go far enough. 

John 14:23: “Jesus replied,“Anyone who loves me will obey my teaching.” Love equals relationship. Whenever you’re studying the Word, you’re stepping into His presence. After you close your Bible, linger there and breathe in His essence, His glory, and His truth. 

      Colossians 3:23-24: “Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for a human master...It is the Lord Christ you are serving.”  Honor and love Him at your job: give one hundred and ten percent; be honest; build trust by carrying out your tasks to the best of your ability every single day.

I Peter 4: 8-11: “Above all, love each other deeply...Each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others...If anyone serves, they should do so with the strength God provides, so that in all things God may be praised through Jesus Christ.”

I John 3:17-18: “If anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in that person?...Let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth.” How do you show your love to the King? 

If you have excellent math skills, offer to help the quiet kid with the sad eyes solve the puzzle of Algebra. There’s no price on the thousand-watt smile of a youngster who finally “gets it” and knows that he can now ace that SAT test. If you’re a TurboTax whiz, help the widow, who’s been struggling since her husband died, file her federal and state returns. If you see the elderly neighbor’s dog escape the yard again, run that little short-legged dachshund down like it’s the only thing the neighbor has left; at age eighty-nine, it could be.

Matthew 25:35-36: “For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was in prison and you came to me….”

Remember that time you noticed that homeless man, wrapped in a coat even in the swelter of summer, his bare toes showing through his worn-out shoes, his clothing peppered with holes? You brought him two hot sandwiches and a grocery bag full of icy cold water and another filled with healthy snacks? As you sat down and listened to him, you learned he was a veteran deployed to Afghanistan, where “all his troubles” began. You offer him what you can, believing that his own country should not abandon a decorated soldier; the new tennis shoes and socks you just bought for yourself that just “happened” to be his size. Helping him remove his coat, you took the cleaned and pressed shirt right off your back and slipped his arms into it. Then, as cars sped by in a cacophony of wind and sound, the faces of their occupants turned away from the reality at the side of the highway, you sit there among the weeds and listen to his stories like his boyhood friend who hadn’t made it home from war.

You fed him, quenched his thirst, clothed him, and most importantly, saw him as a person, as a man. You sprang open his prison door of rejection, abandonment, and grief and revived his hope that maybe he still matters. All because a stranger didn’t pretend he wasn’t there, but searched beneath his ragged exterior and saw him as a former husband, father, and daring Air Force pilot.

Matthew 25:40: “And the King will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.’”     

That’s how you love Jesus.