Because, the devil also believes in God! AND trembles! And we all know where he's going to end up.
No. Believing in God is not enough. Getting others to believe in God is not enough.
It's more important to love God. As it says in Matthew 22. When a lawyer asked Jesus what was the "great" commandment in the law. (What's the most important commandment?)
37. "Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind."
How can God command us to love Him? In fact, how can a human being love God? In fact, WHAT IS LOVE?
Love is many things. Most of what love is, we do not comprehend. I think we have a better understanding of what hate is. We can understand violence as a manifestation of hatred. But, exactly what is love?
If you've ever been "in love", you know that a lot of that euphoria is, well, it's almost, intangible, inexplicable, unreasonable, maybe even "insane" and you even wonder sometimes whether it's imagined. Why would we love anyone? Is it sympathy? Is it a common understanding of life? Is it a smell? Is it what we see when we look at that person? Is it the sound of their voice or the atmosphere they carry with them?
If you've ever been in love, you may have also experienced falling OUT of love! Crashing on the rocks of "reality" and finally "waking up" to the facts. Of COURSE they were not worthy of your love! You were tricked, hood-winked, suckered in, won-over, deceived, misled and you probably imagined the whole thing.
Love lost is heart-breaking. It's a shocker. It destroys self-confidence, motivation, creativity, inspiration and hope. It can cause some to want to commit suicide.
So, we do understand when we've lost love, even though we can't actually understand what love is. If you love your son or daughter, mother or father, it's a kind of love that exists just "because". You know each other so well, you have built a relationship. In the case of a mother, that love comes in the form of a helpless child that needs love and nurturing and a mother naturally responds to motherhood in most cases.
I'm asking you a tough question. I realize that. In fact, I don't have the answer. But, here is what the Bible says about LOVE.
I John 4:8 "He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love."
In other words, "He that does not love does not know God."
GOD IS LOVE.
Ahah! So! THAT'S what love is! THAT explains it ALL. And that explains why we just can't quite comprehend exactly what love is, because we can't comprehend exactly what God is, can we?
You may tell your son or daughter or niece or nephew that there is a God, a Creator. He made everything. He even made us. And if they ask,
"WHY?" as children usually do, you can tell them,
"Because God wanted us to love Him." Simple. Crazy. But true. God wants us to love Him.
"Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with ALL thy heart and with ALL thy soul and with ALL thy mind."
Now that is a BIG, HUGE job. HOW to do?
Understandably, we can only try. It's going to take a LOT of love. Not just a little. Not just human love. But, the kind of love that Jesus believed was worth dying a terrible death on the cross for. He died for LOVE.
Again, we cannot comprehend that. Our brains were apparently not built to wrap around the concept of dying for LOVE.
(Dying for love, by the way, is not strapping an explosive to your body and allowing yourself to be blown up in order to kill those who don't believe in the same God as you. But, I don't need to tell you that. DO I?)
So, let's dig a little deeper to try to understand what love is. There is more on the subject in the Bible...
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