«HE WILL BE LOVED BY MY FATHER”
“He who has My commandments and keeps them, it is he who loves Me.
And he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him
and manifest Myself to him”
(John 14:21).
ON JULY 28, 2021, Johnny Ventura, a Dominican musician, politician, and lawyer whom 7he New York times considered the “Elvis of Merengue,” passed away. Since this is not a fitting place to talk about the artistic greatness of personalities such as Johnny Ventura, I would like to share one of his many anecdotes, one that I believe leaves us with a vital lesson.
He was once asked, “If you died tomorrow, what would your last words be?”
His answer: “I would invite people to review the origin of everything, to go to the book of Genesis and quietly notice that God made a paradise for us, that human beings have distorted it, and that it would be very easy to live in a world in which we followed the Ten Commandments of the law of God. If we did that, we would totally change the world.”
Perhaps some don’t agree with that opinion, because there are believers who defend a spiritual experience without any link to God’s law. They wrongfully assume that the Ten Commandments were abolished at the Cross.
Whereas there is not a single Bible verse that annuls the validity of God’s law, there are many verses that support what was said by the Dominican artist. In Moses’s fifth book, God said, «Behold, I set before you today a blessing and a curse: the blessing, if you obey the commandments of the Lord your God which I command you today» (Deuteronomy 11:26, 27).
Why is it a blessing to obey the commandments? Because doing so eliminates idolatry, immorality, hatred, addiction to work, selfishness, greed …. If we all respected God‘s law, our world would clearly be a better place.
Of course, that obedience is not the result of a rusty legalism, but the result of a loving relationship with our Creator. The Lord declared, “He who has My commandments and keeps them, it is he who loves Me” (John 14:21).
People might not love us as much as they loved Johnny Ventura, but if “we keep His commandments and do those things that are pleasing in His sight” (1 John 3:22), each of us is promised that we “will be loved by My Father, and I will love [them] and manifest Myself to [them]” (John 14:21).
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Taken from: Devotional Readings for Adults 2023
“I AM WITH YOU”
From: J. VLADIMIR POLANCO
Collaborators: Lorina Maya & Avineyda Hernandez