For this is the message that ye heard from the beginning, that we should love one another. (I John 3:11 KJV)

February 14 is a day of love, which is called Valentine’s Day. Even though this holiday arrived from the pagan religion and has the immorality religious practice behind it, we should love one another as God loves us.

John explained that how Cain hated his young brother and committed the first murder of the history, which is recorded in Genesis 4. Cain killed Abel because he was jealous his brother that God accepted Abel’s gift and not his. I believe that this is ongoing event throughout our generation. One of my coworkers found information about our health on stress; and one of statements said that we are getting more separation from each other—health, family, friends, and etc. Let’s look at the divorce rate in America (http://www.divorcemag.com/statistics/statsUS.shtml):

• There were approximately 2,230,000 marriages in 2005 -- down from 2,279,000 the previous year, despite a total population increase of 2.9 million over the same period.
• The divorce rate in 2005 (per 1,000 people) was 3.6 -- the lowest rate since 1970, and down from 4.2 in 2000 and from 4.7 in 1990. (The peak was at 5.3 in 1981, according to the Associated Press.)
• The marriage rate in 2005 (per 1,000) was 7.5, down from 7.8 the previous year.
• In 2004, the state with the highest reported divorce rate was Nevada , at 6.4 (per 1,000). Arkansas was a close second, with a divorce rate of 6.3, followed by Wyoming at 5.3. The District of Columbia had the lowest reported divorce rate, at 1.7, followed by Massachusetts at 2.2 and Pennsylvania at 2.5. (Figures were not complete for California , Georgia , Hawaii , Indiana , Louisiana , or Oklahoma .)
• 8.1% of coupled households consist of unmarried heterosexual partners, according to The State of Our Unions 2005, a report issued by the National Marriage Project at Rutgers University . The same study said that only 63% of American children grow up with both biological parents -- the lowest figure in the Western world.
• As of 2003, 43.7% of custodial mothers and 56.2% of custodial fathers were either separated or divorced. And in 2002, 7.8 million Americans paid about $40 billion in child and/or spousal support (84% of the payers were male).
• Americans tend to get married more between June and October than during the rest of the year. In 2005, August had the most marriages at about 235,000 or a rate of 9.3 per 1,000 people. The previous year, July was the highest month at 246,000, or a rate of 9.9; this doubled the lowest month in 2004, January.
  

If we see our media news, many young people are killed because of their parents’ separations and many teens’ decisions are resulted as thumb down.

God doesn’t want to see the separation from each other. We should love each other. This year is very critical for the United States of America . The people have the choice who should be the next president for the next four years. Even though our nation is like a two-side coin, God wants us to involve in our political events. Our votes are depending on how our nation would be—love for following God’s way or Satan.

We should not let unborn children die without enjoying their lives and without knowing who their Creator is. God just didn’t create us for His global plan. He wants to have intimate relationship with us. He wants to love us as His own. If we let our young people to suffer, then our love for God has no eternal value. It’s ashamed for us to hear that the most divorce rates come from within churches.

God constituted the marriage and He hates divorce.

If ye love me, keep my commandments. (John 14:15 KJV)

Paul wrote the love chapter in I Corinthians 13 and it gives us what is love. He said in verses 4-8, “Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil; Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. Charity never faileth: but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away.”

If we want to have relationship with someone, we must understand that the love is infinite that we can receive more. But there is a requirement to receive love from someone. We cannot just be fallen in love. That is the world method of understanding love.

In John 14:15, Jesus said that if we love Him, then we must not reject any of His commandments. We must follow His laws in order to have relationship with Him. If not, we are indicated that we don’t love Him. There must to have boundary for us to love Jesus with all our hearts. For example, when God tested Abraham’s faith, he didn’t fall in love with Him first. Abraham must trust God if His words would come to pass before he would reach the friendship level of relationship.

God doesn’t us to memorize and follow all the laws in the Bible perfectly. But we must do as best we can. The marriage of relationship doesn’t come in a week. The husband and wife must learn to care for each other before they would come to agreement to be united as one body.

Paul told us that we are the temple of the Holy Spirit (I Corinthians 6:19). We do not own our physical bodies, not even before we were saved by the grace of God through Jesus Christ. Before we became citizens of God’s Kingdom, Satan owned our bodies. In other words, we were the citizens of Satan’s kingdom. We became sinners and not as the children of righteousness. But thank God, we are saved through the blood of Jesus Christ and we can escape from the darkness and go to the light of Gospel.

Although many of us want to love God, we may have difficult time to follow His commandments. Why is that? The answer: We may don’t feel like to take action for Him. This is a wrong mindset of any kind of relationship. We must make move with God or people to build our relationships. We are the temple of the Holy Spirit and must build strong foundation for God to live in us.

The laws of God only do one thing—show us we are guilty of committing sins and tell us that we need to repent. For us to love God, we must abide His laws.

And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment. And the second is like, namely this, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than these. (Mark 12:30-31 KJV)

There are many different ways to have relationship with someone, but there is the only one way to have intimate relationship with God. Before we’d go deeper meaning of relationship with God, let’s discuss about why the most people have hard time to keep relationships.

In this message series, we will discuss the four types of relationship. First type is the relationship with God. This is the main important to have to get other three types of relationship. Second type is relationship with ourselves. Even though this title may seem to be self-centered message, we must understand that the reason God created relationship is that we need to recognize who we are and why He brought us to the earth. Third type is the relationship with other. And the last ones will be the relationship with finance or material things.

Many today’s messages of relationship are fulfilled with the world ways of having relationship and not on God’s standard. If we read Genesis 2, before God created Eve, we see that Adam was lonely and cannot find any other helper to accomplish his work (v. 20). Just imagine how lonely when you do not have someone to fellowship for a month and you cannot go out of apartment due to your disability. I had been down in this road before and it was not pleasant to get into.

Do we know why many people are failing their relationships on marriage, family, business, finance, church, and etc.? It was not because financial situation, but of their lacks of communication and desire to success to reach their goals quickly. Money and other material things don’t communicate us. People around us are that we can have communication every day at anywhere. The way we communication with other people, it reflects to our families, businesses, churches, finances, and etc.

God didn’t create relationship not because He wanted to overrule us, but He wanted to have fellowship with us each day. He wants to love us and take of care us as His children. We do not hear the message of the Cross relates to relationship anymore. We are here not because we want to take over the earth as some television evangelists put us as “little gods.” We are living in this earth because we have relationship with Someone who created us. That is God, who raised His Son, Jesus Christ, from the dead.

Do you want that relationship? If you do, please consider to surrender your life to Him. Not to me or any other pastors, but give your life to Jesus Christ. He is all you need. The world may tell you thousand ways to be saved from going to Hell, but there is the only one way to get that. That is having relationship with God through Jesus Christ.