"You
shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all
your mind, and with all your strength" Mark 12:30 (NKJV)
I
am thankful for Jesus’ simple words, his straightforward message. Not much can be minced in that sentence right
there. Love God, period. Do it with everything you have. There are no reasons why, no guidelines. Just do it.
For
a girl like me who manages to make even the simplest message complex, I
appreciate clear-cut instruction.
Loving
God is easy when things are going our way.
When the world is at my fingertips, when I can clearly see the path
ahead and it is smooth and detour-free, it’s easy for me to raise my eyes and
hands to heaven and praise God for all that he is. It’s easy for me to talk about God’s
goodness, his gifts, his eternal love.
When
the world crashes down around us it’s a different story.
When
things don’t go as planned or as smoothly as we hoped, it is harder to love God
with all that we are. When we feel
persecuted, when our relationships fall apart, when a friend has betrayed us,
when we get sick, when a loved one is sick or dies – then to love God seems
like a chore. Just why hasn’t he
delivered me? we may think. We get
indignant. “After all the time I loved
you!” We shake our fists at the sky.
But
we are taught to love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength. With everything.
Our
God is good; there is not a smidge of darkness in his being. He is light, peace, joy, and salvation. It becomes easy to love God when we see him
from this perspective: for all that he is,
not for all that he gives us.
So
often I think of God in terms of what he gives us. He gave us the world, Jesus, our very breath
and all the goodness that is contained in our lives. When I praise God for the gifts he gave me, I
feel like a kid at Christmas who is happy when he gets what he wants but would
be less so when the gifts aren’t what were expected.
God
is always here. He is most deserving of
our love. We can choose when to love
him, and do it only when the good times are here, but that isn’t what he
wants.
He
wants us to love him for who he is. He
wants us to be all in, all the time, no matter what. He wants our love to be whole, without
distractions or contingencies. He wants
our love to be the love he gave to us reflected right back to him.
It
may be hard. It may be unnatural. But that is his instruction. He knows what we are capable of. With him, we can do anything. Even
love him when we’re not sure how to do it.
*******
Zilla's Vacation Bible School program came complete with a CD of the music they used all week - one of the songs has these words. It's actually a pretty cool song - catchy. I'll have to see if there's a YouTube video for you!
ReplyDeleteI love your last words...even when we're not sure how to do it. It's like loving our kids, isn't it? We manage even though we don't always know exactly how. But your thought about loving God even when we don't know how is something I probably need to think about right now...some days it's hard. Really hard. Too much nonsense to deal with and things not going the way we'd like. It makes me feel better to know that He knows...even when I'm doing it wrong.
I find it a relief - and freeing - to know that God knows exactly what is in my heart, even when I can't arrange my thoughts around it. Thanks for sharing this! xoxo
DeleteI often fall into the "I love you God, but. . " trap. I love God, but really, why do I have to put up with xyz? I love you God, but why is everything so hard? It is frustrating relationship at times--but I suppose in that way it is real. I always know I can come back to loving him and he forgives me for all my "buts."
ReplyDeleteYeah, I get that. A real relationship is what God wants from us, I think. Sometimes it gets so real that I just have to say "You know what? I don't even know what to pray for here. So would you just handle what I need?" I think he doesn't mind.
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