Possible to fully love God w/o fully seeking to align our wills w/His will?

[GodHeals]

Hi,

Is it possible to fully love God without fully seeking to align our wills w/His will for our lives? Please let me know of any scriptures that might help me better understand?

This verse came to mind when talking with a friend of mine:

“For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome.” - 1 John 5:3

God Bless You!

 

[St_Francis]

Christ said, If you love me, you will obey My commandments.

 

[Boulder257]

I am actually quite interested in this question for the following reason: I love my parents, but I didn’t always fo what they told me to do. It didn’t take away from how much I Ioved them, but it did affect my obedience to them. Please don’t misunderstand me. I am not suggesting that we can be disobedient to God; I am more interested in how someone answers this particular questions.

I ask mostly because I work with the youth and I can see this question coming up.

Thanks in advance!

 

[Julian0404]

Yes, the goal is to “always” align our will with the WILL OF GOD. The reality is that we sin, which separates us from GOD and places us in juxtaposition to HIS WILL. HE anticipated this and provided the Sacrament of Penance, wherein we can return to following HIS WILL.

Recall the First Commandment “commands us” to Love GOD with our whole heart, mind, soul and body - which cannot be done partially or casually, it must be a complete and full alignment. The Sacrament of Confession is not a casual act, as it is very humbling to inform the Priest all that we have done that is outside of GOD’s WILL, and it requires the Loving Fear of the LORD to confess our sins.

However, if we return with humble hearts, GOD will receive us, forgive us and we are again aligning our will with HIS.

 

[MarcoPolo]

I am actually quite interested in this question for the following reason: I love my parents, but I didn’t always fo what they told me to do. It didn’t take away from how much I Ioved them, but it did affect my obedience to them. Please don’t misunderstand me. I am not suggesting that we can be disobedient to God; I am more interested in how someone answers this particular questions.

I ask mostly because I work with the youth and I can see this question coming up.

Thanks in advance!

Parents, while they are figures of obedience to the “Father,” fall short because God’s will is never in error whereas a parents’ will could be. That’s of course not an excuse for kids to disobey their parents. One must have a sober reason to ever do that, such as if the parent asks the child to commit a sin.

 

[JRKH]

Hi,

Is it possible to fully love God without fully seeking to align our wills w/His will for our lives? Please let me know of any scriptures that might help me better understand?

This verse came to mind when talking with a friend of mine:

God Bless You!

The very short answer is … No it is not…The key word being “fully”, and in particularly not fully seeking…
As for a Scripture reference I don’t think one need look any further than Mt 22:36-40 and the very first great commandment. Love God with your whole soul, mind and strength.
Can we say we are doing this fully while withholding from God any part of our will?

Now don’t get me wrong here…It is possible to Love God as fully as we are able at a given point in our journey while we struggle to align our wills to His.
The key lies in striving to do our very best. We may not always succeed…but the effort needs to be there.

I am actually quite interested in this question for the following reason: I love my parents, but I didn’t always fo what they told me to do. It didn’t take away from how much I Ioved them, but it did affect my obedience to them. Please don’t misunderstand me. I am not suggesting that we can be disobedient to God; I am more interested in how someone answers this particular questions.

I ask mostly because I work with the youth and I can see this question coming up.

Thanks in advance!

Strict obedience is not necessarily the most important thing. A good parent seeks to instill in their child a sense of right and wrong such that, as the child grows older, s/he is able to act on the proper principles rather than simply on obedience to some command.

Our faith is like that too…Jesus repeatedly argued with with the Scribes, Pharisees, lawyers etc. over these matters.

Teaching a child obedience is like the OT covenant with it’s “Thou shalt” or “Thou shalt not…” but as the Child grows older…we need to move into the New covenant which is much more like “Thou shalt…” Because, and “Thou shalt not…” Because

In this way - when the child later has to make his own decisions…they are correct on principle even if not on “letter of the rule”.

 

[bzkoss236]

We are called to strive for perfection. It is impossible for us to be perfect, but that doesn’t take away from the fact that we should strive for it. So, you should always seek to align your will with God’s. You won’t be able to align them perfectly (because that would mean that you are God), but we should do our best anyway, because it pleases God. And if we love God, then we should seek to do that which pleases Him.

 

[504Katrin]

Hi,

Is it possible to fully love God without fully seeking to align our wills w/His will for our lives? Please let me know of any scriptures that might help me better understand?

This verse came to mind when talking with a friend of mine:

God Bless You!

Plenty. Just to mention a couple of examples.
For example Abraham. He was even willing to sacrifice his only son in order to fulfill what he thought was G-ds’ will. However, a relatively long dicussion took place when Abraham opposes his will to destroy Sodom.

How about Moses, who didn’t want to leave in the first place and who discussed his mission?
How about when he prayed many hundreds of times because he wanted to get into erez Israel and against G-ds’ will?

And how about when Moses was in between a rock and a stone of sending the spies, what did G-d say to him? He said to Moses, paraphrasing: “If you want to…you can…If you don’t want to…you don’t. It’s up to you!”

 

[AnneElizabeth]

If a wife asks her husband to stop looking at porn because it hurts her deeply, but he doesn’t and says he still loves her anyway… is this love?

What the husband means when he says he ‘loves’ her is that he has affection for her, but he still wants what he wants to do irregardless of what it does to her. (destroys her inside and destroys the bond between them) He may mean to love her, but he is not in the moment he chooses to please himself.

Its not love to continue to do something that hurts another. God’s will being done will not hurt people in a destructive way, but it can ‘hurt’ them as in their pride is hurt. This is what is called “worldly sorrow” … which is opposed to the sorrow that brings about repentance. (I don’t remember what epistle that was in, but you can google it, I"m sure.)

I heard Mother Angelica saying once that God said that being lukewarm is worse than being a sinner- And really, would you want to marry a person who is only ‘so-so’ about marrying you? No, because what it means is that you really aren’t anything special to the person and that he means to use you to serve his pride, not really to see you through and help you through. We won’t be perfect, but our striving is what matters most. God sees the heart.

When you love the Lord, His commandments will not be a burden.

 

[fhansen]

Hi,

Is it possible to fully love God without fully seeking to align our wills w/His will for our lives? Please let me know of any scriptures that might help me better understand?

This verse came to mind when talking with a friend of mine:

God Bless You!

To love God-as well as neighbor-is-to align our wills with His. To the extent we love Him with our whole heart, soul, mind, and strength and our neighbor as ourselves there’s nothing more to be done; our justice would be complete, and sin (opposition to His will) is automatically excluded.

But meanwhile God is patient with us, as we remain turned towards Him. Jesus died for us while we were yet sinners after all and justification is a process in which the divine Potter molds us into the beings He created us to be, with our cooperation, drawing us into alignment with His perfect will.

 

[Boulder257]

If a wife asks her husband to stop looking at porn because it hurts her deeply, but he doesn’t and says he still loves her anyway… is this love?

What the husband means when he says he ‘loves’ her is that he has affection for her, but he still wants what he wants to do irregardless of what it does to her. (destroys her inside and destroys the bond between them) He may mean to love her, but he is not in the moment he chooses to please himself.

Its not love to continue to do something that hurts another. God’s will being done will not hurt people in a destructive way, but it can ‘hurt’ them as in their pride is hurt. This is what is called “worldly sorrow” … which is opposed to the sorrow that brings about repentance. (I don’t remember what epistle that was in, but you can google it, I"m sure.)

I heard Mother Angelica saying once that God said that being lukewarm is worse than being a sinner- And really, would you want to marry a person who is only ‘so-so’ about marrying you? No, because what it means is that you really aren’t anything special to the person and that he means to use you to serve his pride, not really to see you through and help you through. We won’t be perfect, but our striving is what matters most. God sees the heart.

When you love the Lord, His commandments will not be a burden.

Thank you for this answer. This was very helpful for me.

 

[tskrobacz]

Hi,

Is it possible to fully love God without fully seeking to align our wills w/His will for our lives? Please let me know of any scriptures that might help me better understand?

This verse came to mind when talking with a friend of mine:

God Bless You!

Your question makes no sense. God’s will for us is himself (love). If you fully love God and love your neighbor as yourself then your will is aligned to God’s will…anything short of that is sin (separation)