1 Timothy 1:5 -The aim of our charge is love that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith.

I want you to imagine being in a relationship that is about honesty, mutual sacrifice, encouragement and love around all the things you’ve done together. Now imagine you gradually notice none of these qualities being present anymore but still doing the same things together. Sometimes we assume that people we love should have the same level of affections for us after we have continuously grieved them with our willful disconnection from them! God being no different but perfect in His Love, is the reason we can be grieved like Him when people willfullly choose to disconnect themselves from us, yet come back around when it requires our attendance. But attendance and sincere affections are two different things.

This is why God condemns us when we think we can just check in and out of "duties" and think some genuine affection is going to bond us to Him just because we show up in prayers, reading the Bible, church, etc. A person who is present but aloof at heart in their family, know in their conscience that the relationship is defiled in some way. The other person may not know what is defiling the relationship, but they know that the connection is not sincere.

God is the only One who is able to come into a heart that is hardened in sin and break it’s self righteousness and humble it to true worship. This is why we can stay in a stale relationship with Jesus and other people and sense no need to change, because God alone grants repentance, meaning you cannot change when you want to! The root of sincere affection is humility, which needs God to know what true love is, because He is the essence of it! So if we don’t humbly come to Christ prayerfully and desperate to have sincere affections for Him and others, we will stay in pride, defending our insincerity with empty lip service and shallow praise. Which God’s sees of course, as well as the people who know us best.

In His Love, Ld