In Love With Jesus?

A long time ago, in high school chorus, I sang - "Love is a many-splendored thing, ... love is nature's way of giving, a reason to be living; the golden crown that makes a man a king!"  As a 16 year old kid, the real meaning of many-splendored loved was incomprehensible to me.  I know something of it now, with 38 years of marriage.  Yes, I am ‘in love!’  It is a multi-faceted experience involving passion, devotion, sacrifice, discipline, and daily maintenance. The tease of desire chips away at fidelity if there is no discipline of the eyes and heart. The friction of the stuff of ordinary life will bring irritation unless the love of God’s Spirit is invited into our lives, each day.  Thankfully, I am not ‘in love’ with Bev like I was in 1974. It was a superficial attraction then. Today we are one in heart. I love her deeply; our lives interwoven by shared faith, shared family, and blended spiritual gifts.

Are you 'in love' with Christ Jesus?

I don't mean to imply that we need a teen-age crush on Jesus. That’s silly! But, we do need to feel passion for our God. Christianity without passion just isn't Biblical! The grandest love story of all time is the story of God's love for us, written in the life and death of Jesus.  Just as I cannot explain what I feel for my wife with bullet point logic, so we cannot reduce the love of our Abba to a neat paragraph of theological jargon. Jesus did it with a story. He told of a wayward, willful son who came home to the arms of the Waiting Father after wasting his fortune and ruining his life! The young man expected condemnation and a life separate from Dad.  What did he find? Love!  "And while he was still a long distance away, his father saw him coming. Filled with love and compassion, he ran to his son, embraced him, and kissed him." That is compelling stuff! It defies logic, cannot be explained. It’s just love.

When we bring our scientific mind to our faith and we make the Gospel a thing of systematic theologies with points built into a structure of reason, it is like describing falling in love by talking about hormones. Of course, God’s love for us can be described just as love can be partially explained by talking about sexual attraction, but…  there is more than just reason. There is mystery!  The Bible is is "God's Love story!" Genesis 3 tells us that God came walking in the Garden, just to be with His created beings, a Divine Lover. The most common imagery that the Hebrews used to describe their relationship to God was marriage, and it became the language of the Church who is the 'Bride of Christ.' The ancient prophets railed on the people who went after other gods calling their perfidy - spiritual adultery.

The Bible speaks of our covenant with God, not a contract! He loves us, draws us and we love Him in return. The love is not calculated, nor is it based on some equation of return. It is abandonment of ourselves to Him.
Ah, friend, do you love Him?  If we love Him, we will stop playing “let’s make a deal” with God.  Our faith will go way beyond - "I believe some facts and You give me the key to Heaven." We must love Him for life today, not just for Heaven in eternity.

Let this 'love letter' inspire you today. Read of God’s many-splendored love for you and bring your heart home to Him.  "Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will— to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves." (Ephesians 1:3-6, NIV) So,  "I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge,” Why? So, “that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God."  (Ephesians 3:16-19, NIV)  You will become so full of His Presence as to make Him and you indistinguishable, like a married couple who are one, each given to the other irrevocably.

___________________________

I'm calling out to You,

There must something more;

Some deeper place to find,

Some secret place to hide,

Where I've not gone before!

Where my soul is satisfied,

and my sin is put to death;

and I can hear Your voice,

and Your purpose is my choice,

as natural as a breath.

The Love I knew before;

When You first touched my life,

I need You to restore,

I want You to revive!

Could You place in my heart,

A passion for Jesus,

A hunger that seizes,

my passion for You?

My one desire,

my greatest possession,

My only confession,

my passion for You!

Passion for Jesus

Author: Brian Houston