thought for food: why don't we desire more from our relationships with God?
I mean, he only promises that he will give us the desires of our heart (Psalm 37:4), that he is mighty to save (Zephaniah 3:17), that he seeks to place us on firm, unshakable ground (Psalm 40:2), that his righteousness flows like a mighty stream (Amos 5:24), that he will shut the mouths of lions to preserve us (Daniel 6:22-23), that he will turn our valley of death into a door of hope (Hosea 2:15), that he renews our minds day by day (Romans 12:2), that we will appear before God with Christ in full glory (Colossians 3:4), set out where we should live and what we should do, so that "in him we live and move and have our being" (Acts 17:26, 28), that his perfect love casts out fear (1 John 4:18), that he has overcome the world!! (John 16:33: "I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.")
What's left?
Somehow we don't live like these things are happening. We don't love like we are intimately known by Jesus, loved anyway, filled and have sunk our identity fully in his name.
A couple of quick reasons come to mind (tell me some more)...
a) because we don't know how. We've never put our trust in God, we don't know how to really experience him, we don't even know how we really experience him. We say, "Lord, Lord," like foolish builders (Luke 6:46), that are founded in caterwauling and carrying on about
b) because we take the burden of salvation upon ourselves. (disobedience, which is sin through and through, has been explained to me as any and all ways we try to be our own savior.)
But Ephesians 2:8-9 says, "For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith — and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God — not by works, so that no one can boast."
It specifically says there is nothing we can do to deserve God's favor more or less, and consequently nothing we can do right or wrong to make him want or love us more or less.
Something that has been sticking with me is tiffany young's one question during women's time last night, that her one question to God would be, why on earth did you choose us, let alone send your son for us, to 'live and have our being' here when you knew we would forsake you (supposing, of course, that God is all-knowing, all-loving, all-powerful?) To which Stephanie Dunnam replied, how would we ever know what need meant if God did not give us a need for him? How would we ever know what perfect love meant if we had not first experienced and been disappointed by imperfect love?
I find it amazing and beautiful and true (that's the Don Miller in me speaking) that the Father loved us so much that he let us, stupid, pitiful, despicable creatures as we are, actually CHOOSE whether or not to love him back, knowing that many of us would not, but that his work never ended (John 10:14-16: "I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me — just as the Father knows me and I know the Father — and I lay down my life for the sheep. I have other sheep that are not of this sheep pen. I must bring them also.")
Of Jesus, who had no fear of intimacy, Don Miller writes in his Searching For God Knows What, "But if the gospel of Jesus is relational; that is, if our brokenness will be fixed, not by our understanding of theology, but by God telling us who we are... then this would require a kind of intimacy of which only heaven knows. Imagine, a Being with a mind as great as God's, with feet like trees and a voice like rushing wind, telling you that you are His cherished creation.
"Earthly love, I mean the stuff I was trying to get by sounding smart, is temporal and slight so that it has to be given again and again in order of us to feel any sense of security; but God's love, God's voice and presence, would instill our souls with such affirmation we would need nothing more and would cause us to love other people so much we would be willing to die for them.
"Perhaps this is what the apostles (those who diligently followed Jesus and basically were the original evangelists and church planters because of how convicted they were of his lordship) stumbled upon." (47)
Finally, Jesus entreated Peter three times, do you love me, because he KNEW we were prone to wander, he knew that we would stray, that we are those sheep who scatter at the slightest hint of darkness, who skitter and jump and do not trust the master to take care of us.
By saying this, by pointing all this out, we must not forget that Jesus also gives a command along with this quiet reproach.
It is an if-then statement, meaning that there are no exceptions.
"Simon, son of John, do you love me?"
"Yes, Lord, you know that I love you."
"TEND MY SHEEP."
"FEED MY LAMBS."
That is our commandment, too.
What's left?
Somehow we don't live like these things are happening. We don't love like we are intimately known by Jesus, loved anyway, filled and have sunk our identity fully in his name.
A couple of quick reasons come to mind (tell me some more)...
a) because we don't know how. We've never put our trust in God, we don't know how to really experience him, we don't even know how we really experience him. We say, "Lord, Lord," like foolish builders (Luke 6:46), that are founded in caterwauling and carrying on about
b) because we take the burden of salvation upon ourselves. (disobedience, which is sin through and through, has been explained to me as any and all ways we try to be our own savior.)
But Ephesians 2:8-9 says, "For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith — and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God — not by works, so that no one can boast."
It specifically says there is nothing we can do to deserve God's favor more or less, and consequently nothing we can do right or wrong to make him want or love us more or less.
Something that has been sticking with me is tiffany young's one question during women's time last night, that her one question to God would be, why on earth did you choose us, let alone send your son for us, to 'live and have our being' here when you knew we would forsake you (supposing, of course, that God is all-knowing, all-loving, all-powerful?) To which Stephanie Dunnam replied, how would we ever know what need meant if God did not give us a need for him? How would we ever know what perfect love meant if we had not first experienced and been disappointed by imperfect love?
I find it amazing and beautiful and true (that's the Don Miller in me speaking) that the Father loved us so much that he let us, stupid, pitiful, despicable creatures as we are, actually CHOOSE whether or not to love him back, knowing that many of us would not, but that his work never ended (John 10:14-16: "I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me — just as the Father knows me and I know the Father — and I lay down my life for the sheep. I have other sheep that are not of this sheep pen. I must bring them also.")
Of Jesus, who had no fear of intimacy, Don Miller writes in his Searching For God Knows What, "But if the gospel of Jesus is relational; that is, if our brokenness will be fixed, not by our understanding of theology, but by God telling us who we are... then this would require a kind of intimacy of which only heaven knows. Imagine, a Being with a mind as great as God's, with feet like trees and a voice like rushing wind, telling you that you are His cherished creation.
"Earthly love, I mean the stuff I was trying to get by sounding smart, is temporal and slight so that it has to be given again and again in order of us to feel any sense of security; but God's love, God's voice and presence, would instill our souls with such affirmation we would need nothing more and would cause us to love other people so much we would be willing to die for them.
"Perhaps this is what the apostles (those who diligently followed Jesus and basically were the original evangelists and church planters because of how convicted they were of his lordship) stumbled upon." (47)
Finally, Jesus entreated Peter three times, do you love me, because he KNEW we were prone to wander, he knew that we would stray, that we are those sheep who scatter at the slightest hint of darkness, who skitter and jump and do not trust the master to take care of us.
By saying this, by pointing all this out, we must not forget that Jesus also gives a command along with this quiet reproach.
It is an if-then statement, meaning that there are no exceptions.
"Simon, son of John, do you love me?"
"Yes, Lord, you know that I love you."
"TEND MY SHEEP."
"FEED MY LAMBS."
That is our commandment, too.
posted by steph at
8:17:00 PM
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