Love God and do as you please. What a dangerous and yet liberating concept. A ‘biblical’ concept I might add. One not taught too often in our churches today. Oh sure, in recent times we have heard that Christians should follow their new heart in Christ and somehow find their identity within that journey. But that’s not what Augustine and Luther meant when they said, Love God and do as you please. For Jeremiah 17 tells us that our hearts are deceitful and wicked. Even after Christ has regenerated us, making us alive to Him and changing us from enemies of God to lovers of God, we still have within each of us the potential of the vilest of sins and our hearts are still capable of being deceived by The Deceiver himself. Just because I strongly desire something doesn’t mean God has placed that desire on my heart. Just because something is ‘natural’ doesn’t mean it’s aligned with God’s will. Our hearts can and will deceive us.

So what makes the statement biblical? LOVE GOD and do as you please. The greatest commandment, according to Jesus is ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind’. When we find ourselves so in love with God, so aligned with His purposes, so submitted to His will, so consumed with His glory, we will discover that His desires have become our desires. What He wants is what we want. What pleases Him is what pleases us.

The danger is when we reverse the cause and effect. First we love God THEN we do what pleases us.

It is my desire that we at CHCC become so passionate about the greatness of God and His glory and so in love with God that we can say with every decision, we simply did what pleased us.

soli deo gloria