How do I love Thee?

A line from a poem by Elizabeth Barrett Browning came to mind as I mused about loving God. “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.”  Love is both simple and complex, expressed some moments with fervor and in others with quiet perseverance.  Perhaps you are old enough to remember that song - "Love is a many-splendored thing!” It is!  My prayer is to ‘love God’ more not less, to avoid the rut of a familiar relationship as I pursue an ever renewed knowledge of the Holy One.  How do I love Thee?  It is a question worthy of our thoughts, a response of faith to the words of Jesus who taught us that loving God with “heart, soul, mind, and strength” is the core of life. 

I was formed in the Pentecostal traditions of Christianity so my first thought about loving God turns to the emotions. From my youth I absorbed the idea that loving Him will include laughter, tears, passionate prayers; a very personal engagement. When my tribe prays for spiritual renewal what they usually mean, though perhaps unconsciously, is that God will grant an emotional encounter with the Holy Spirit. Such moments are to be treasured. However, loving Him is so much more multi-faceted – including obedient service, steady discipline, studious understanding, and stillness.

Are you 'in love' with Christ Jesus?
If you define that only by applying the romantic ideals about love taught by our culture, you will be disappointed.  Yes, we should be passionate about loving our God. Christianity without passion just isn't Biblical! But, there is so much more. It is not really about YOU, but rather about HIM.

Loving God is first a response to HIS love for you.  We cannot just work ourselves into loving Him, nor can we somehow stir up a passion for the Holy in ourselves.  “We love,” John says, “because HE loved us first!”

My favorite teaching parable of Jesus is recounted in Luke 15. It is about the Father’s love for me! It isn’t a pretty story but it is oh so wonderful in what it means for you and me.  A selfish and rebellious son willing to abuse his father’s good heart demands his inheritance and goes off to ‘forget’ who he is.  In a short time he succeeded in making a mess of life. Only after he wasted his fortune and ruined his life, as he sat hungry and alone, in his job as a pig feeder, did he finally begin to grasp the immensity of his offense and the value of the home he had abandoned. 

“When he finally came to his senses, he said to himself, ‘At home even the hired men have food enough to spare, and here I am, dying of hunger! I will go home to my father and say, “Father, I have sinned against both heaven and you, and I am no longer worthy of being called your son. Please take me on as a hired man.”  (Luke 15:17-19, NLT)  He expected judgment.  He found 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.

Yes, we love because HE loves us first, loving us to life, making possible our restoration to Himself at the cost of His Son’s life, promising us life in His forever home through the Resurrection.  We cannot love God apart from acceptance, through faith, of His grace and love. If we won’t start there with Him, with His love for us, our “love” will become an ugly imitation based in religious zealotry, duty,  attempted deals with Heaven, and calculations of appeasement.  God just wants us to respond to His declaration that He loves us and to weave that acceptance into every part of life, making it the foundation of every choice, every day.

Love is based in His covenant – it not a contract. God granted us life, not based on our performance but as a gift.  Engrave this truth in your mind and let this inspire love: "But God is so rich in mercy, and he loved us so very much, that even while we were dead because of our sins, he gave us life when he raised Christ from the dead. (It is only by God’s special favor that you have been saved!) For he raised us from the dead along with Christ, and we are seated with him in the heavenly realms—all because we are one with Christ Jesus. And so God can always point to us as examples of the incredible wealth of his favor and kindness toward us, as shown in all he has done for us through Christ Jesus." (Ephesians 2:4-7, NLT)

Ah, friend, do you love Him?

If we love Him, we will stop playing “let’s make a deal” with God.  Our theology of love will go way beyond the idea that if we believe some facts, then we get the key to Heaven.  Our love will be a tumultuous discovery of a Person, a weaving of His life into ours, surrender, acceptance. In the process, we will start to think as He does, acts as He wills; not because we must, but because we have become of His heart.

The word from the Word this Friday is a song of praise. "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)  

"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 … So, “that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God."  (Ephesians 3:16-19, NIV)\

Amen.

(Video of this blog at this link)

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My Song

Why should I sing of lesser things

And things that pass away

When I've a friend like Jesus now

To sing about each day

 

I have no song to sing

But that of Christ my King

To Him my praise I'll bring

Forevermore

His love beyond degree

His death that ransomed me

Now and eternally

I'll sing it o'er

I find no more delight

In other songs

My melody of love

To Christ belongs

I have no song to sing

But that of Christ my King

To Him my praise I'll bring

Forevermore

 

He is the theme of angel song

That fills the heav'ns above

Should I not join their chorus sweet

And praise the Lord I love

 

John W. Peterson

1954. Renewed 1982 John W. Peterson Music Company

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