HAVE YOU HEARD IT SAID BEFORE…“You have to love God more! You have to be on fire for God MORE! Love God with all you have! You must have more passion for God!”
Why do we say this? Are we right? Is life about loving God more?
Are we meant to break our backs to love God more? Are we meant to do more so we will love God better?
Is life about loving God more?
When you think about it for a minute – its actually seems crazy to think like this. Think about it… Do you think God has to have our affection in order to feel worthwhile? As if, if we didn’t love him enough then he would have feelings of insecurity, doubt and loneliness.
Or have we maybe got love upside down?
I mean, maybe life isn't so much about us striving to love God more- as it is about us letting him love us more.
1 John 4:16 says - God is love. God has a lot of love to give and He wants us to share in His love.
I went to the Goodwood markets a little while back with a friend. There was a caged off area for kids to play with animals. There were chickens, pigs, goats and bunnies. We saw one little girl who was trying to pick up and hold this little bunny. But the bunny was running away and she couldn’t pick it up to hold it and cuddle it. And we saw her coming towards us trying to love and hug this bunny. And the little girl said to us “The bunny doesn’t want me to hug it”
My friend, as quick as a flash, replies to the little girl in what I thought was an amazing answer - “No, he just doesn’t know that he does”. And as I heard that I thought – Wow! That is just like us. Like the bunny, often we just don’t know that what we need is to experience his embrace – so we run and hide rejecting his chase of us because we are afraid; rejecting his pursuit of us because of our fear; rejecting his embrace because of our unworthiness; rejecting his love because of our unloviness. We fall for the lie that we are not worthy for God to love us. That we aren’t good enough for God’s love. We feel shame and we begin to think that “there must be something wrong with me” – so therefore I do not qualify for God’s love. We begin to think like Adam & Eve that when we see or hear God coming near to us that he is coming to point out our sins, to punish us rather than to reach out his hand to pick us up out of our mess and restore us to himself again. So what do we do… how do we respond? -well rather than reach out our hand to allow him to pick us up we back away in fear and turn our heads and hide ourselves from his outstretched arm - from arms that weren’t trying to punish us - but embrace us (Luke 15). In all of our fear and attempts to cover up and hide from God we forget a vital truth about God's love. What is that….? we forger… that God loved us while we were yet sinners "Christ arrives right on time to make this happen. He didn't, and doesn't, wait for us to get ready. He presented himself for this sacrificial death when we were far too weak and rebellious to do anything to get ourselves ready. And even if we hadn't been so weak, we wouldn't have known what to do anyway. We can understand someone dying for a person worth dying for, and we can understand how someone good and noble could inspire us to selfless sacrifice. But God put his love on the line for us by offering his Son in sacrificial death while we were of no use whatever to him.” (Romans 5:6-8).
He wants to love us. If only we would realise that this is the very thing that we need most too.
If only we would stop feeling unworthy of his love. If only we would stop thinking that God wouldn’t love me. If only we would stop hiding and running from his love.
If only we would stop striving to love him more, and learn to be still and let him love us, I dare say that we would actually begin to live life well.
I love the way that John so beautifully describes and defines what real love is:-1 Jhn 4: 10 This is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us.
It is not about our love for Him, but His love for us! After all, we can only love because of his love for us. – 1 John 4:19 We love because he first loved us.
Let us stop striving and trying to love God more. Let us, let him, love us.
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