Deuteronomy 30:20a And that you may love the Lord your God, listen to his voice and hold fast to Him.
God expects a reciprocal act of love from us. The main reason, why we are unable to reciprocate this love is fear. A lot of times, people become Christians out of fear. One of which is the fear of being in hell.
God does not want us to follow him because we fear hell.
He wants us to be with him out of love. Faith in God does not rely on our circumstances but on the unchanging nature of God.
So in Romans 8:35 downwards, we are asked the question: What shall separate us from the love of God? So we serve God not because we are afraid of failing but out of love for His person.
When we love God, service to Him is genuine and He is pleased by our actions. In the opening scripture, we see that love comes first, then obedience and commitment. This shows that love must be the basis of our relationship with Him.
In fact, outside of love, we can’t have that relationship with Him because the Bible says in 1 John 4:19 that ‘We love him because he first loved us.’ Again, in Romans 12:1, we are admonished to offer our bodies as a living sacrifice not because we are afraid of His wrath, but because of His love towards us.
No wonder in 2 Timothy 1:7, the Bible says, For God has not given us a spirit of fear but of power and of love and of a sound mind.
Our motive must not directly be to avoid sin, but rather to love God. When we love Him genuinely, we would not do the things He is not pleased with. Come to God just as you are and with time, He would help with the addictions, the weaknesses, and all that you struggle to do for Him.
Serve God not out of fear but out of love and that makes our relationship with him solid because if you love him, you can go the extra mile for Him.
The Word In Clarity 