John 14:23-24 - Show God you love Him

John 14:23-24 - Jesus replied, "If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching. My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him. He 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”. I have a dog, a little cocker spaniel named Zoey. We got her as a puppy and have trained her the best that we can. Zoey can’t speak to us to show us her affection but we can tell that she loves us. She always wants to be close to us or be where we are. She will follow us all over the place wagging her tail. She gets real excited to see us when we come home and jumps around and all that stuff. Most importantly though is that she obeys our commands. She knows that is she obeys, she gets rewarded and it is her may of trying to show us further love, by trying to make us happy. Apply this same thought now to our lives as Christians. We can talk to God and we can tell Him we love Him. We do not have to wag our tails our anything like that, but we need to understand that words are just words. Our actions speak louder than any words we can ever say. What good is it to tell God you love Him if your actions don’t match the words? Our passage says "If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching. My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him”. We show our love to God by obeying His teachings. Through this God will come and be with us in our hearts and in our lives. It also goes to say that “He who loves me not will not obey my teachings”. We can say whatever we want to say to God, but He knows our heart. If we do not obey His teachings and try to live life our way then we are telling Him we do not love him but more importantly we are showing him we do not love Him. If we follow His teachings, then our rewards are great. We receive the Holy Spirit into our lives. We receive a peace that passes all understanding. We receive a real relationship with God. I challenge you to read the word of God so that you can understand His teachings. Once you understand the teachings, follow them. Remember, we can show God that we love him better than anything we can ever tell Him. So show Him you care, show Him you love Him and just obey.