YOU CANNOT WORSHIP GOD WITHOUT LOVING HIM
“Keep yourselves in the love of God, looking for the mercy of our LORD Jesus Christ unto eternal life” (JUDE 21)
Both the Old and New Testaments teach that the essence of true worship is the love of God.

Our Lord declared this to be the sum of the Law and the Prophets: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might.” Now, love is both a principle and an emotion; it is something both felt and willed. It is capable of almost infinite degrees. Love in the human heart may begin so modestly as to be hardly perceptible and go on to become a raging torrent that sweeps its possessor before it in total helplessness.

Something like this must have been the experience of the Apostle Paul, for he felt it necessary to explain to his critics that his apparent madness was actually the love of God ravishing his willing heart!

In the love which any intelligent creature feels for God there must always be a measure of mystery. It is even possible that it is almost wholly mystery, and that our attempt to find reasons is merely a rationalizing of a love already mysteriously present in the heart as a result of some secret operation of the Spirit within us.

We can be certain that it is quite impossible to worship God without loving Him. Scripture and reason agree to declare this. And God is never satisfied with anything less than all. This may not at first be possible, but the inward operations of the Holy Spirit will enable us in His time to offer Him our poured-out fullness of love!

A. W. Tozer