Loving God

By Deborah Tarver Waters

How do you love God? How does a loving God allow difficult things to happen in your life? Can you even believe that God exists?

The secret to loving God is trusting in His word and learning from and living through the stories found in the Bible. We can love God through prayer, through obedience, and through faith. We can even love God when we suffer.

Loving God will help you grow in Him and help build the foundation to trusting and loving the Creator of the heavens and the earth.

Deborah Tarver Waters invites us to join her on a spiritual odyssey that takes us deeper into an exploration of God's love for us and our love for Him. Through personal witness and candid sharing, Tarver Waters illustrates how God's gracious loving pursuit of us opens the door for a healing and transforming relationship with Him.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Proisle Publishing Services
• Release date: Mar 14, 2024
• ISBN: 9781963735291

Book preview

Acknowledgments

First, I want to acknowledge and thank my husband, Dr. Kenneth L. Waters for helping me with the technical part while writing this book. You have been very supportive, Doc, and I appreciate it. I also want to thank my mother, the Reverend Velma Harding, for raising me to love the Lord. She taught me how to tithe and fast. I love you forever, Mom. I want to thank Dr. Reginald Woods, the pastor of Life Changing Ministries Church who licensed and ordained me through an extensive three-year program. Thank you for seeing the call of God in my life. And finally, last but not least, I want to thank Dr. Robert L. Fairley for giving me the opportunity to learn how to teach and preach the Word while he was the pastor of New Hope Missionary Baptist Church. This book stems from many of the sermons I preached while at his church. I’ll always love you!

And I want to give a special acknowledgement to the Lord. There’s always a time when I’m writing when the Holy Spirit takes over. Thank you, Elohim!

It has always been my desire to write a book. I never thought I knew enough about anything to write one well. As I was pondering this dilemma, the Lord told me that I knew a lot about Him. The truth is that while no one can know everything about the Lord, I do know a lot. Ever since April 23, 1988, it has been my intent to read the Bible from the first word in Genesis to the last word in the book of Revelation in one year. Starting with the King James Version in 1988, and then the New King James Version, and now the New Living Translation of the One Year Bible series, I have read the Bible faithfully for the last seven years. I was sporadic before, but it is now my intent to read it completely every year for the rest of my life.

You see, the Bible never gets old. It lives! The living word of God. It never gets boring—well the genealogies are—but the more I read, the more I learn. I learn something new every year. The more I read, the more it fits together like a giant jigsaw puzzle. The Old Testament is the foundation of the New. One gets a more thorough understanding of the New Testament if you have a foundation of the Old. I like to say the Old Testament is the Messiah revealed. The New Testament is Jesus fulfilled. Loving God and accepting Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior is the most important decision one can ever make. I hope this book provides an insight on how to do that. Enjoy!

One night, I had a dream that the boys and me were driving down a street, and we saw this large beautiful house with a for sale sign in front. We wanted to see it, so we pulled over to go inside because the realtor was there showing the house. When we walked up, she looked at us and told me that I would need to make an appointment. We were disappointed because the house was really beautiful on the outside, and we wanted to see the inside. I kind of prayed and mumbled to myself that I wanted to see the house, and as soon as I said this to the Lord, the lady changed her mind and told me that I could look around. I was disappointed. The house was beautiful on the outside but not at all what I wanted on the inside. And then I woke up.

I thought about the dream and remembered that as soon as I told the Lord that I wanted to see the house, the lady changed her mind. I wondered if the Lord was asking me what I wanted. That if I told Him what I wanted, He would give it to me. I thought about what I wanted from the Lord. I thought about carnal things like more money, a better job, a beautiful house for real, a good husband, but I remembered in the dream how the house looked good on the outside, but it wasn’t what I wanted on the inside. So I said, "Lord if this dream is Your asking what I want from You, I want you to teach me how to love You. I want You to teach me Your ways so that my ways please You. That night was the beginning of the relationship that I have with the Lord today. What I realize now is that everything that I have, everything that I am with the Lord is a direct result of my praying and asking and His hearing and giving.

I asked Him to teach me how to love Him. And now I’m in love with Him. And I’ve never been in love like this before. I didn’t even know that it was possible to love the Lord the way I love Him. I think about Him all the time. This smile appears on my face whenever I think about Him. I trust Him. I want to please Him. He is teaching me His ways, and so I’m beginning to know Him. Sometimes, I still pray that I want to know the very essence of who and what He is. I’m in love. I’m in love because I prayed and asked, and He heard and gave.

I asked the Holy Spirit to teach me how to pray. He began to tell me what to pray for. I began to ask God for a relationship with Him, an intimacy with Him that no man knows is possible but that He knows is possible. That He was just waiting for someone to step out on crazy faith and ask for what most might think is impossible. You see, I want to know Him. I want to know the very essence of who and what He is. The Holy Spirit began to direct my prayers, and I began to ask God for the impossible. I prayed to know God like Enoch knew Him. The Bible says in Genesis 5:22 that Enoch walked with God. I want to know God like Moses knew Him. Numbers 12:8 says, And God says I speak to him [Moses] face-to-face, even plainly. I want to know God like Elijah knew Him. First Kings tells us that Elijah could ask God to do things like shut up the rains or pour down fire from heaven, and God would do it just because Elijah asked. James 5:17 says, Elijah was a man subject to like passions as we are, and he prayed earnestly that it might not rain; and it rained not on the earth by the space of three years and six months. And he prayed again, and the heaven gave rain, and earth brought forth her fruit. I want to know God like Elisha knew Him. Elisha asked for a double portion of Elijah’s spirit, and Second Kings 13:21 says that his (Elisha’s) dead bones made a dead man live. Elijah has seven miracles accredited to him, and Elisha has fourteen. I want to know God like David knew Him. David was in love with God. You can read the Psalms to see how passionately in love with God

David was. Psalm 63 says,

Oh God, You are my God. Early will I seek you. My soul thirsts for You. My flesh longs for You in a dry and thirsty land where there is no water. So, I have looked for You in the sanctuary to see Your power and Your glory. Because your loving kindness is better than life, my lips shall praise You. Thus, I will bless You while I live. I will lift up my hands in Your name. My soul shall be satisfied with marrow and fatness, and my mouth shall praise You with joyful lips when I remember You on my bed. I meditate upon You in the night watches because You have been my help; therefore, in the shadow of Your wings I will rejoice. My soul follows close behind You; Your right hand upholds me.

And the Bible says that David was a man after God’s own heart. David was in the love with God, and God was in love with David. I want to know God the way Jesus knew Him. Jesus called Him Father and knew Him from the foundation of time. Sounds impossible? Yes! But the Bible says that with God, all things are possible. Jesus said in Luke 18:27, The things which are impossible with men are possible with God. I want the relationship, the intimacy with God that no man knows is possible. When I think of the TD Jakes, Rabbi Kirt Schneider, Pastor Rick Renner, Joyce Meyers, and Bishop John C. Hill, I know that I’m asking for a hard thing, but there is nothing impossible with God.

It’s the intimacy with God that I’m experiencing that is one of the most amazing things that is happening in my life. I told Him that I want to know Him more intimately than I ever thought possible. I read Joy Dawson’s book, Intercession, Thrilling and Fulfilling. She ends by making a statement about prayer ending with, My lover, Jesus Christ. I began thinking, My lover! It sounded blasphemous to me. But the Lord whispered to my spirit, You’ve been making love to me for months. I was shocked. How had I been making love to the Lord? The Holy Spirit said, Through your praise and worship. Praise and worship is actually making love to the Lord. I never thought about praise and worship like that before. But then I began to think about the scripture that says, He inhabits the praises of His people. Psalm 22:3 (KJV) says, But thou art holy. O thou who inhabits the praises of Israel. I looked up the word inhabit in the dictionary; it means to dwell in, to make one’s abode, to stay, reside, await, endure. God dwells, makes His abode in, stays, and resides in us during praise and worship. Our praise and worship should be coming from the very depth and essence of who we are. Therefore, God is inhabiting, residing, staying in the center of our being—our soul and our spirit, the very depth of who we are. We should now have a clearer understanding of, Greater is He who is in me than he who is in the world. God can and is willing to dwell, live, in us.

We know there are two different kinds of making love. One type is the passive, tolerant, Are you finished yet, dear? The other is the active participation: I wish it could last all night long. Where is your love making, your praise and worship with the Lord? Are you there counting the minutes until the praise and worship leader brings it to a close, or do you get caught up wishing that it would never end? I get caught up. I shut my eyes and get lost in the presence of the Lord. I’m not really aware of what’s going on around me. I couldn’t care less. I’m attentive to the praise leader’s direction, but that’s out of respect, and God always does things decently and in order. But I get caught up. I guess it’s a type of rapture.

God is a father image, a male image. And I wondered if it might be harder for a man to get caught up than a woman. But the Holy Spirit reminded me of David. David was in love with God. Remember Psalm 63? Regarding love and relationships, David said of Jonathan in Second Samuel 1:26, How I weep for you, my brother Jonathan! Oh, how much I loved you! And your love for me was deep, deeper than the love of women. And David’s love for God surpassed his love for Jonathan. We are to love God with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength. And we know that David wasn’t gay. But David knew how to love God? Men, you do know how to love God. David, a man, taught me how to love Him.

My pastor, Dr. Reginald Woods, taught that there are benefits in having a relationship with God. One benefit is that you can tell Him everything. He’s my father, my friend, my confidant, my savior. He’s my everything, and I can tell Him everything. Bishop Clarence McClendon and Bishop Noel Jones taught that we, Christians, act like God can’t handle our sins or that He’s going to be shocked by what we tell Him. Not! The Bible says though our sins be red as scarlet, His blood will wash them white as snow. Confess your sins to Him because He’s faithful to forgive them.

The Holy Spirit gave me a parable. Mary, Jane, and Susan were best friends. Mary had a big problem but only shared it with Jane. Jane was so concerned about Mary’s problem that she told Susan