"I love the LORD, because He has heard My voice and my supplications. Because He has inclined His ear to me, therefore I will call upon Him as long as I live." [Psalm
116:1-2; NKJV]
Sometimes we talk of love as needing to be unconditional, of loving not conditioned on anything in the other, but just because we choose to love. It is totally voluntary, an act of grace, a free gift with no strings attached. Certainly God loves us in that way, he loved us while we were his enemies, while we were unattractive and otherwise unlovable (cf. Romans 5:6-10). But God makes it a lot easier for us to love him. He doesn't ask us to love him simply out of our own virtuousness. The psalmist reminds us that God makes it very easy to love him. "We love Him because He first loved us" (1 John 4:19). In this case it is because God hears us and answers our prayers, that we are so full of gratitude and thankfulness, that we don't feel like anything except loving him. And how many other blessings could we count to remind us of God's goodness towards us, especially in Christ Jesus? May we meditate on his love towards us often, so that a love for him would well up inside of us. And may it drive us to pray and keep praying, calling upon the LORD as long as we live.
