Our Best and Strongest Love

A paraphrase from the works of Richard Sibbes on Love Toward God.
There are four imporant outcomes concerning our love toward God:
1. Our highest esteem and value is for Him
2. It causes a desire to be in Union and Communication with Him
3. It produces peace due to His perceived Power, Love, and Wisdom
4. It generates a desire to please Him in all things.

So there is first in every Christian a high esteem for God and of Christ; he chooses Him above all things, and commends Him to all. Secondly he desires to be united to Him, and thus, there is communication by means of hearing the Written Word and prayer. Thirdly, he places his contentment in Him alone, because in his worst conditions he is content if he may just have His countenance shine upon him. Fourthly, he seeks to please Him because he labors to be in such a condition that God may delight in him as he delights in God.

As our love therefore is the best thing we have, and none deserves it more than God, so let Him have our best and strongest love, that we may love Him with all our hearts, minds, souls and might. When we give our best affections and love to lesser things (and everything is less than Him), it is like letting a clear, sparkling stream run down into a sewer. He requires and desires our best and strongest love.

Glorifying God through our dependence

From Chapter 15 in Andrew Murray’s Like Christ, In His Dependence On The Father

"Verily, verily, I say unto you, The Son can do nothing of Himself, but what He seeth the Father doing: for what things soever He doeth, these the Son also doeth in like manner.

Blessed dependence! it is indeed the manner which becomes us towards such a Powerful God. Our daily confession of dependence gives Him the glory which belongs to Him as God. It keeps the soul in peace and rest, for it allows God to care for all. It keeps the mind quiet and prepared to receive and use the Father’s teaching. And it is so gloriously rewarded in the deeper experience of holy communication, and the continued ever-advancing discoveries of His will and work with which the Father crowns it. Blessed dependence! in which the Son lived on earth, is the desire of godward souls.

Nearer, My God to Thee

From Richard Baxter's glorious THE SAINTS EVERLASTING REST, [OH, hurry Lord.]

The noblest of Christians are they whose faces are set most directly for heaven. The heavenly mind is the best way to a life of comfort. The countries far north are cold and frozen because they are distant from the sun. What makes such frozen, uncomfortable Christians, but their living so far from heaven? And what makes others so warm, but their living higher, and having nearer access to God? When the sun in the spring draws nearer to our part of the earth, how do all things congratulate its approach? The earth looks green, the trees shoot forth, the plants revive, the birds sing, and all things smile upon us. If we would but try this life with God, and keep these hearts above, what a spring of joy would be within us; how we would forget our winter sorrows; and how we would praise our great Creator. O Christian, get above. Those who have been there have found it warmer, [[and at times blazing]]!

Preferring Christ above all things

Excerpt from the Sermon The Duty of Seeking the Things Which Are Jesus Christ's by David Black (1762-1806, pastor in Edinburgh, Scotland)

Maturing Christians begin to seek the things which are Jesus Christ's in preference to their own interests. The things which are Jesus Christ's are the unseen things promoting the Kingdom of God and pertaining to His glorious work of subjecting all things to Himself. The spiritual man seeks to understand how to promote Christ's interests. These are opposed to his own things-- his comfort & ease, his reputation, his financial security and family interests, his career and natural desires. He becomes opposed to those selfish views which motivate the rest of mankind. The soul of the spiritual man is enlarged and motivated toward an unselfish benevolence toward the interests of all of the members of Christ's holy Body of believers (the church).

The true Christian is taught by the Spirit of Christ to form a proper estimate of the unspeakable value of spiritual blessings, and the comparative insignificance of all earthly pursuits, while he looks not at the things which are seen and temporary, but at those things which are unseen and eternal [[permanent]] (II Cor. 4:8). Risen with Christ, he seeks and sets his affections on things above, not on things on the earth (Col. 3:1-2). According to the measure of his faith is his capacity to despise earthly schemes and selfish considerations and prefer heavenly things and the promotion of the Kingdom of God and His church in the Earth.

This longing for eternal, unseen things is a striking mark of true spiritual religion as opposed to a 'mere form of godliness.' That which is born of the flesh is flesh; but that which is born of the Spirit is spirit (John 3:6). A worldly man is a stranger to the faith which overcomes the world, not realizing the things of an unseen and everlasting state, he is always afraid of venturing too far, of being too righteous, of perhaps harming his worldly interests, and inviting the censure of those whose good opinion he so wishes to preserve. But the [[fierce-hearted]], genuine disciple of Christ has learned to deny himself, to take up his cross, and follow his exalted Lord at any cost. His faith has taught him to prize Jesus Christ and eternal things above everything which this world can grant. [[As Jesus refused to bow down to satan when He was offered the kingdoms of this world prematurely, the godward Christian refuses the offers of this world, preferring all of the unseen treasures and promises of Christ to anything this world dangles in front of him-his whole portion is Christ alone and His eternal interests]].