“O Lord, our lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You set your glory above the heavens. When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him?” Psalm 8v1,3,4
This psalm bursts with praise to both the glory and grace of God. David paints amazing pictures with his sense of awe and joy. We are taken back, above and beyond the heavens to the very beginning itself. Of course we know that behind the beginning is the God of Creation, Grace, Providence, and Redemption. We are not sure when David penned this psalm but I can imagine it’s after a night gazing into the starry sky. David is in absolute awe with the enormity and vastness of God’s creation and the minuteness of man in comparison. There have been times we too have gazed at the vast expanse of a star filled sky, aware that we are only seeing a fraction of what is there. Like the psalmist we say, What a God and “what is man?”(v4)
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“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.” Deuteronomy Chapter 6 verse 5
Israel at this point were standing at the borders of the Promised Land. Moses is preparing them for entry. The preparation has to be spiritual first of all, otherwise every effort is doomed to failure. Allegiance to the Lord has to be the number one priority-and that is the same for ourselves too. God requires that we love Him with all our heart. God requires to be on the throne of our heart. So, I want us to think a little about this love and how it manifests itself our lives.
God’s love is born into our heart the moment we are regenerated. The moment God, through His Spirit, touches our lives, breathing new life into us, something radical and life changing takes place. It is impossible for God to come into our life and for us not to know it. That doesn’t mean that a person who is converted, immediately has full assurance of faith and knows they are born again. Sometimes the experience may be long and drawn out from our perspective. However an interest and desire for God and the things of God has surfaced in our life. Prior to this there may have been thoughts of God, even good thoughts, but they were fleeting and temporary. Now the heart is genuinely seeking after God and desiring to know more of Him. A love has been born in our heart and that comes from God. The Bible tells us how it works. “We love Him because He first loved us.” That tiny statement is packed with deep eternal truths. The love we experience for God has come about only because of His love to us. What does God’s love mean and how does it work in our lives?
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