FALLING IN LOVE
God is dealing with me about something and I am in his hands. He is instructing me about something I thought I already knew. He is taking me back to some of the basics. This may sound very elementary to you but I guess I needed a refresher.
You see, something happened this summer that made me look back at the beginning. What happened is I saw someone fall in love. Just fall. Passionately, deeply, unequivocally in love - with God! It was an awesome experience to witness. I couldn’t get over it and it began to change me.
Now this was not a new convert in the blush of the realization of the grace and mercy of the Almighty. This was someone who has been walking with God and serving Himfor many years. That is what made it so remarkable. Her long-term struggles had made her a little war weary, but she was fighting on. She cried out for help. She solicited the prayers of some of the saints and we responded. She received our help, confessed her weaknesses, and for me that is where the story would have ended. Except that I saw her a few weeks later and she was not the same. We talked and it suddenly hit me. “Oh, my goodness! You’re in Love.” “I know”, she whispered, “and I just want to do anything He wants me to do – just because I love HIM so much. I am giving up my right to do things my way.”
You may be wondering what this has to do with me. Witnessing this miraculous change in a person whose circumstances had not changed, suddenly made some things totally clear. I know the promise of the commandment to Love God with all your Heart and all your soul and your entire mind. I know why He commanded it. That love is the key to many things. I won’t even pretend that I know them all. But I know some new ones.
It is not for His sake that we are instructed to return to our first love. It is not to punish us that God says he will spit us out for being lukewarm. It was not a desire for noise that caused Him to repeat to the children of Israel who He was, to instruct them to write it on their doorframes and hang it about their necks, but so that their love wouldn’t grow cold. It is for our sakes, because the blessing lies in that heated, passionate environment where we will do anything to please Him just because we love Him. How else would we (I) overcome the persistent, pervasive, relentless selfishness - the desire to please ourselves (myself) at the expense of everything else? How else would we understand the implicit promise that in that love lies the blessings?
Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. Deut6:4
