Bible Text: John 14:15 | Speaker: Dr. Harold J. Sala | Series: Guidelines For Living | If you love me, you will obey what I command.  John 14:15

“Simon, son of John,” Jesus asked Peter, “do you truly love me?” (John 21:16).  When Jesus asked that question, Peter must have thought, “Hey, just a minute.  How can you ask that after what I’ve been through with you?  Remember, I was the one who even followed you to the house of the high priest after You were seized in Gethsemane.” If Peter thought it, he didn’t voice it.  Yet when Jesus challenged his answer by asking the same question three times, Peter was disturbed.

Should you be confronted with that same question, how would you answer?  If He should make the question a bit more personal and ask, “Do you love Me more than gardening?  More than sleeping in on Sunday?  More than making a bit more money by twisting the truth?”  What would you say?  “Ouch!  That’s rather personal, isn’t it?”  But isn’t that reality?

When the communists took over in China, according to David Aikman, one of our most knowledgeable observers of Chinese affairs, there were about one million Christians.  Then persecution began.  As many as half the people who called themselves Christians turned their backs on their faith, and went the other way.  The price was too high; their love, too weak.

Could that happen where you are?  It has happened before, and it could happen again. It did happen when hordes of communist soldiers descended on Korea in the 1950’s.  According to Billy Kim, hostile soldiers surrounded one small church in North Korea and, taking the artist’s rendering of the image of Jesus, placed it outside the church, commanding the people to file by the picture and trample on it–or face death.

What a horrendous thing to have to do!  Some reasoned, “We’ll do it, but we don’t really mean what we are doing.”  One girl, though, defiantly cried out, “I refuse to do it–I love Him too much to step on that picture.”

Then, says Kim, the officer in charge said, “Anyone who would deny his Lord would also deny the state and is not worthy to live.”  And it was her life–not those who denied their faith–which was spared.

Do you really love Him whom you call Savior?  In the early months of the 20th century, a revival stirred the little country of Wales.  When the coal miners were converted, their profanity also stopped, and bedlam broke out in the mines when the mules carrying the carts of ore no longer heard the cursing to which they had become accustomed.

But what many do not know is that great movement of God in Wales was begun by a teenage girl who stood in a prayer meeting and quietly said, “I do love the Lord….”  She began weeping and said it again.  “I do love the Lord”–no great sermon, no great theological revolution, a simple declaration of heart-felt love coming from the lips of a teenage girl.

Today we’ve heard a great deal about God’s love for us, but what of your love for Him?  May our hearts reflect the words of Elizabeth Prentiss’s hymn:  “More love to Thee, O Christ, More love to Thee!  Hear Thou the prayer I make On bended knee; This is my earnest plea:  More love, O Christ, to Thee, More love to Thee, More love to Thee.”

Three times Peter answered Jesus’ question, “Do you love me?”  Then Jesus said simply, “Follow me!”  It’s still the only way to prove your words, even today.

Resource reading: John 14:15-30