A: We love because God first loved us. (1 John 4:19). The foundation of love comes from the fact that God has given us an example of it through His son, Jesus Christ. We can only know how to TRULY love, if we know the TRUE love that God gives us.
There are a number of ways that the Bible teaches us how to love God:
1. Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. (Deut 6:5) - We need to love God with our whole beings. That means He must be apart of your every day life, and not just the times we are at church. In every decision we make, every action we do, every word we speak, it must honour God.
2. So if you faithfully obey the commands I am giving you today—to love the LORD your God and to serve him with all your heart and with all your soul (Deut 11:13) - When we love God, we also want to serve Him. We adopt an attitude of giving and servant. We want to give back to God, what He has blessed us with. We no longer want to be consumers in our churches or fellowships, but instead, we want to use the gifts that God has given to us, to glorify Him.
3. Love the LORD your God and keep his requirements, his decrees, his laws and his commands always. (Deut 11:1) - As a response to the love that He has for us, we strive to live a righteous life. That means following His commands outlined in the Bible, living for God and not for our selfish desires and trying our best not to sin. The reason why we do this is not because we want to do good deeds to gain salvation. Instead, it is because we have already received the gift of salvation that our hearts have changed and we wish to honour God by keeping His commands.
4. Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world. (James 1:27) - we love God by loving the people around us. This passage says that if we are to have a genuine faith, it means to love the people that God loves. The challenge is that sometimes we find it hard to love those we don't like...but God is clear that if we have experience His love, we are to love others in that same manner.
Loving God requires everything. You must make a conscience decision to love Him in every aspect of your being. Not only are we to DO the things outlined above, more importantly, our attitudes and our outlook on life must change from the worldly view to the Godly view.
[answered by Pastor KJT]
