Fear No Fear

““If you love Me, keep My commandments” (John 14:15, MEV). This is a GREAT verse. Jesus loves us so much, He makes everything SIMPLE. Not complicated. SIMPLE. Not always EASY. SIMPLE. The original Greek reads a little differently than the English. A close translation reads like this: ‘If you love Me, My commandments you will keep.’ I like that better. The English makes it seem like something we have to DO. As a PROOF. Something we have to DEMONSTRATE. But that isn’t what Jesus said at all. He said that we WILL keep His commandments when we love Him. AUTOMATIC obedience. We will find ourselves obeying His commandments. Almost out of the blue. Because we love Him. So it isn’t about doing right or doing wrong. It isn’t PREFORMATIVE. It is simple and basic. When we love Him, we won’t be able to STOP ourselves from obeying Him. We will WANT to make Him happy. We’ll do those things for our human partners. We’ll make them specific food. We’ll buy specific treats. We’ll get presents or wear certain outfits. We sometimes even behave a certain way. Why? Because we know THEY LIKE IT! We want to make them happy so we do it. We try to make them smile. We try to make them happy with all those little things. Why do we think it would work any differently when we love Jesus? In fact, it works more with Jesus than with human beings because we share the same nature as Jesus (2 Corinthians 5:21). Holy Spirit lives inside us (Romans 8:9). We are so different, we cannot sin anymore unless we CHOOSE to (1 John 3:9). Thank God that we no longer automatically sin. Thank God even more for His mercy when we do choose ourselves over Him (1 John 1:9). But the MORE we love Jesus, the LESS we choose ourselves. The more we understand about how much Jesus loves us, the more we fall in love with Him (Ephesians 3:14-19). He makes it so SIMPLE because He doesn’t want us to miss it. To miss out. To lack in ANY way. When we love Him, it opens all the doors in ourselves to receive what He’s always been offering. What a GREAT gift that is!