Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.
Deuteronomy 6:5
As mentioned last time, believers are often concerned about how much they love God, for fear that they do not love Him enough. R.C. Sproul used to address this concern by asking, “Do you love Him at all?”
Those who said, “No” were then advised to hear and respond to the gospel because they were almost surely not saved.
To those who said, “Yes,” were then counseled to understand that if they loved Jesus at all, that is a strong indicator that they were saved, for those who are not saved do not love God and those who are saved DO!
That counsel was followed by the encouragement to grow in grace and in the knowledge of Christ, which in the hearts of the redeemed will cause love for God to grow!
Our problem regarding loving God is that the word (and indeed the concept of), love has been hijacked. It is common to think that love is only an exciting emotional set of feelings. Loving God may involve excitement and emotional feelings, but it is not synonymous with those things.
Loving God is more of a commitment than a feeling. Those who love God have a desire to engage in certain activities, regardless of their feelings. What activities are desired by those who love God? Desire His Word, His Church, prayer, the sacraments, obedience, and desire to please Him—enough to engage in these activities even when you have no particular emotional feelings to do so.