One of the things perhaps some might fast off is all TV, all kinds of visual stuff and then just take time to be with God, reading the word of God, then allowing yourself to meditate and engage God. It would be a good thing to do. It really would be a good thing to do. I find every now and then I just have to cut everything out, so that I can just sharpen my attention again, and begin to increase the presence and awareness of the presence of God, a wonderful thing to do. Another thing you need to do in pursuing God is to deal with issues very promptly. You know in any kind of relationship that loves dies if you don't nurture it, and it dies by little things, little disappointments, little offences, little worries and anxieties, little distractions, little diversions. It just goes quickly, so you have to deal with them very quickly. Martha was very, very busy and doing things for Jesus and she got so busy doing things for Jesus she ended up stressed out, and Jesus had to quietly put her right and say, there's something more important than just being busy with your life. You need to learn to prioritise time with Me, personally hearing from Me. How many of you are living off someone else's messages? How many of you are hearing God speak and then when someone preaches, oh the joy that what they said confirmed what God had already been saying to you? Oh, that's another area isn't it?
So loving God involves firstly our pursuit of Him and engagement with Him from the heart and spirit. Okay then. Now the second aspect of it which is also very important is my response to the word of God, and you cannot disconnect or you can't separate loving God, from how you respond to His words, so heartfelt obedience to the word of God is the significant way we demonstrate that we really do love Him. If you say you love someone but you don't listen to a word they have to say and ignore them completely, you can't really say that love is very deep. You can imagine in a marriage you know, if they say they love one another, but neither actually listens to each other and they certainly don't co-operate together, that can't be a very deep love relationship. Why would you think that you can build a deep relationship with God, without actually learning His word and being in His word and hearing what He has to say, about how to make your life run?
Jesus made that extremely clear. Let me just give you a scripture which would be very helpful - in John 14, Verse 21, He who has My commandments and keeps them is the one that loves Me. And My Father will love him, and we will manifest Ourselves to him. So loving the word of God - you say well I'm not a good reader. Well get one of them on CD and just play it over or download it onto your iPod and start to play the word of God. Let the word of God come into your life and into your mind and into your heart, and begin to find out what - let God speak to you about how to adjust your life. You know the Bible tells us very clearly, in all the New Testament, how to live our life successfully. I've found when I look at why people don't succeed inevitably they violate God's ways, so if you were to begin to say take just a simple scripture, honour your father and your mother that it may go well for you, so you begin to meditate in that scripture, begin to think well what ways could I be dishonouring to them? What ways would I honour them? What will this enable me to do in the relationship? What can I expect God to do? See, it's very, very good.