IT'S NOT YOU...IT'S ME

Imagine if you will if I told my wife that I didn't love her.  If I just woke up one day and looked at her and told her "baby, I don't love you anymore.  I know were married so I will stay with you like I said I would, but I really don't love you anymore, I'm just with you because I said I would stay with you until one of us kicked the bucket.  So for the rest of our lives I will be with you and hold you and provide for you, but I just don't love you."  More than likely those words would devastate her.  Even though I promised to go ahead and go through the motions of marriage the fact that I did not love her would completely make everything that I did feel cheap and insincere.  Fortunately I do love my wife.  Yet all too often this is how we are told to live out our Christian lives.  We are constantly having our arms twisted and being swindled into doing something "for God" that we really don't want to do.  As long as we can hold up the happy Christian mask then everything seems to be a-ok.  We really don't love what we are doing, but we will do it anyway because we think that is what we are supposed to do to make God happy.  If we don't do what everyone else thinks that we are supposed to be doing then we are told that we are lukewarm or being disobedient to God.  The bible presents us with a different approach to serving God, and that approach is love.   1 Timothy 1:5 NASB But the goal of our instruction is love from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith.  So many Christians get caught up in going through the motions that they begin to lose love.  Everything is just about doing doing doing, gotta do this and gotta do that to keep the church running smooth when in reality they are overwhelmed overburdened and have no love.  The message that Christ gave to the church at Ephesus in the bible was this  Revelation 2:3-4 NASB and you have perseverance and have endured for My name's sake, and have not grown weary. (4) 'But I have this against you, that you have left your first love.  The church at Ephesus was effective in its programs and at exposing false teachers, but somehow that lost their love.  They got to caught up in the motions that they lost love.  God wants us to love Him from a pure heart, a good conscience and a sincere faith that are all built on Jesus Christ and what He did for us.  Christ lives inside of us and wants to express His love through us.  Whatever you do, do it with true love, with sincerity and from the heart.  Everything done outside of a pure love for God is just a dead work and a waste of your time and your energy.