How to Know if You Love God (2)

(2) Where there is true love and affection, there is a desire of union. Love is that kind of affection; it draws the soul all it can to the thing loved. If there be the love of God, there will be a desire of fellowship and communion with him by all means.
a. A desire of union will breed a desire of communion. We will open our souls often to him in prayer, and we will desire that he will open himself in speaking to our hearts by his Spirit. Those that make no habit of hearing the word and of free access to the throne of grace, they love not God and Christ. Strangeness is opposite to love, and it dissolves affections. When we are strange to God, that we can go from one end of the day or week to the other, and not be acquainted with God, and not open our souls to him, it is a sign we have no love.
b. Where we love we consult and rest in that advice, as coming from a loving person. In all our decision-making, we will go to God and take his counsel; and will account it the counsel of one that is wise and loving.
c. A man who loves God, acquaints himself with his God and will not lose that communion he has with God for all the world. As Daniel, they could not get him from his prayers with the hazard of his life (Dan. 6:11).
d. Where this desire of union and joining is, there is a desire even of death itself, that there may be a fuller union, and a desire of the consummation of all things. To fear the sweet and eternal communion we will have in heaven, where we will have all things in greater excellency and abundance, it is from want of faith and love. Paul said, 'I desire to depart, and to be with Christ, for that is much better for me' (Phil. 1:23). We should rejoice to think there are happier times to come, where there will be an eternal meeting together that nothing shall dissolve.

Devotional Readings taken from Puritan Richard Sibbes 'Refreshment for the Soul.'
A Glance of Heaven, Works, vol. 4, pp. 184-86
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