Do I love God the Father? Do I think of him, and go to him as a loving Father in Christ? Have I the Spirit of adoption, so that I cry, Abba, Father? Do I love him as the Father of mercies, the God of hope, the God of peace, the God of love?
– George Burder –
1752-1832
Do I love God’s law? Do I delight in the law of the Lord after the inward man, not wishing it less strict and holy, but loving it because it is holy? Am I as willing to take Christ for my King to rule over me, as for my Priest to atone for me? Do I hunger and thirst after righteousness? Do I pant and long and pray to be holy? Do I wish to be holy, as I wish to be happy? Do I hate all sin, especially that sin which most easily besets me, and labor daily to mortify it and to deny myself? Do I sigh for complete deliverance from remaining corruption, and rejoice in the hope of it, through a holy Jesus? Do I long for heaven, that there I may be satisfied with his likeness?
– George Burder –
1752-1832
Do I love God’s people? Can I say to Christ, as Ruth to Naomi, “Thy people shall be my people?” Do I love them because they love Christ and bear his image? Do I feel a union of spirit with them, though they may not be of my party, or think exactly as I do? Can I say, “I know that I have passed from death of life, because I love the brethren?”
– George Burder –
1752-1832
The first effect of a true love for Christ is our clinging to him. The believer’s soul is knit to Christ’s soul as David’s was to Jonathan’s (1 Samuel 18:1). Love produces a firm clinging to Christ crucified that makes a soul in some sense always present with Christ on the cross.
– John Owen –
from The Holy Spirit, 1674
Rose early to seek God and found Him whom my soul loveth. Who would not rise early to meet such company?
– Robert Murray M’Cheyne –
Journal Entry: February 23, 1834
If you ask me why God should love us, I cannot tell. I suppose it is because He is a true Father. It is His nature to love; just as it is the nature of the sun to shine.
– DL Moody –
A true love to God must begin with a delight in His holiness.
– Jonathan Edwards –
1709-1758 AD
Every man should keep a fair sized cemetery in which to bury the faults of his friends.
– Henry Ward Beecher –
1813-1887
Obedience to God is the most infallible evidence of sincere and supreme love to Him.
– Nathanael Emmons –
1745-1840 AD