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Love of God, Understanding love
Love of God, Understanding love Entries in Love of God (11)
How to Love God
Thursday, November 17, 2011 at 09:53PM 
Monday’s Meditation was downright belligerent. After quoting the first and greatest commandment, to love the Lord our God with our heart, soul, mind and strength, I had the temerity to ask, “Yes, but how exactly do you go about doing that?”
The Bible-quoters were among the first to respond. It’s a good place to start: “He who has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me . . .” (John 14: 23) I memorized this verse when I was in college. It seems to indicate that Jesus measures our love by how well perform (“Really?” says Jesus. “You love me? Then why don’t you start acting like it?”) Keeping the Law is what the Father wants, isn’t it? Don’t eat that fruit; go where I show you; sacrifice your son; here are ten big ones; here are 603 more--until finally I begin to wonder if it will ever be enough to keep him happy. That’s how you keep him happy, right? This verse is straight forward: it tells us exactly what to do, whether we feel like it or not. Still, doesn’t love involve feelings along with will-power?
The worshippers responded, too. They remind us of the woman who shed tears on His feet, and dried them with her hair. Jesus tells everyone that this woman displayed “great love.” She’s not the only one: another woman lavished expensive perfume at his feet. John, “the disciple whom Jesus loved,” rested his head on Jesus’ chest and heard his Lord’s secrets. Forget decorum. Forget the rules. Worshippers break through social barriers to grab him, kiss him, and generally make a scene. They don’t care. They have to be close. I respect passion; I wish I were more passionate. Yet I’ve seen many a passionate person veer wildly off course, led astray by those same passions. It’s not enough to feel things deeply if your mind and habits do not shape you into his likeness.
One final group said learning to love God is like any other relationship: we invest our time and attention. Husbands and wives grow to know each other over the years; so we learn to love God. This resonates with me as well: who could get to know God in a day? Perhaps love is more a learned behavior than anything else. I thought I loved my wife when I married her, only to discover I had a Kindergarten-version of love. In 27 years I’ve discovered just how deeply selfish I am. I’ve had to learn how to deny myself on behalf of my beloved--how much more with God? And yet (one more time) it seems that familiarity can become a way of life, apart from love, where we discover a comfortable identity that has very little to do with real love.
So how, exactly, do we love him?
I’ve discovered one passage of scripture that speaks to all three of these models. You might roll your eyes in disbelief when I tell you. You will think, “how cliché” when I point toward 1 Corinthians 13 as our model for loving God. But it has served me well: as child I received this passage as a description of God’s love for me. Later I saw it as a model for how to love others. Now it has become the Spirit’s leading on how to love God in return.
If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing. ~ No ministry model, whether charismatic or socially aware can replace the need for me to love the Father. How many times have I replaced my love of God with my love of ministry? It would embarrass me to tell you.
Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails. ~ How many times have I proudly stamped my feet before God, impatient for him to act? I’ve been angry with God, because after all, isn’t he responsible for everything? I finally had to ask, do I trust him? Jonathan Martin, pastor of Renovatus Church in Charlotte, NC, said, “Everything in my life changed when I finally stopped being suspicious of God.” How could we suspect the motives of the One we love?
Where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. ~ Love is all that will last between the Father and me. There will be no need for ministry in heaven. My insights will mean nothing. And finally, I will know what love is.
I have faith in him. I hope in him, and greatest of all, by his grace, I am learning to love him.
Monday's Meditation: The Greatest Meditation
Monday, November 14, 2011 at 12:01AM 
You should have seen the blank faces staring back at me, nearly 30 of them. I might as well have asked the class, “Quick! what’s the cube root of 1,117?”
We had been discussing the first and greatest commandment: “The most important one,” answered Jesus, “is this: ‘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 mind and with all your strength.’” Jesus provided a bonus answer, not demanded by his questioner: “The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.”
Here's how the question came about: after an hour’s discussion of the text in Mark 12: 28-31, I wanted to end the class on a practical note, so I asked, “OK, then. We have discovered the two most important legacies of the Old Testament. So tell me: how do we demonstrate our love for God?” The room fell silent. Not even the crickets dared make a sound.
I drove home from class wondering, “could it be that difficult? Has Jesus left us no clue regarding how to show our love for God?”
Perhaps the students in my little class had never considered the question. Could that be? I teach a college religion course in a small southern town where “everyone” goes to church. Has there been no Sunday school class, no Bible study, no sermon ever addressed at the question, how do we love God? This question is more than a meditation for the coming week. It is the question of our lives. It is the question of our purpose and being. Have you ever asked yourself this question?
If the entire Old Testament narrative can be reduced to just under 50 words, what answer can we give? What answer must we give? What answers can involve our emotion, personality, intellect and physicality? What answers can include the Creator, whom we cannot see, and our neighbor, whom we can? What answers can give direction to child and grandparent alike? What answers are required of us?
I’m asking because I’ve begun to wonder if we have given ourselves to this question. Perhaps you have given it some thought. Perhaps you will now. Either way, I’ll check the comments below nearly every hour, all week long, curious to know how you express your love for God. We need each other’s answers--what are yours?
Monday's Meditation: Hearing the Symphony
Monday, September 6, 2010 at 07:37AM 
“Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.” ~ 1 John 4:8Three simple words: “God is love.” What could be easier? John, the disciple whom Jesus loved, has given us the key to understanding God. A second-grader could create this sentence. All we need to know about the Creator is captured in nine letters, but these nine letters require supernatural insight, or we are forever trapped in an earth-bound idea of God.
Try describing the sound of a symphony orchestra to someone who has only heard a piano and you’ll begin to see the challenge of understanding the revelation in this verse. We are sure we know all about love: the love between husband and wife, between parent and child, the love between lifelong friends. These are wonderful experiences, but only shadows before the dawn.
When we read "God is love," it’s easy to apply our notions of love to Him. Because we have experienced some taste of love we are tempted to think God conforms to our definition of love--but he does not conform to some definition, he is love. He is the definition.
This is part of the challenge of knowing God, and our meditation for the week: what if the things we think we know keep us truly knowing? What if because we have heard the sound from a piano we convince ourselves that’s all there is to know about music? Without choosing to do so we think God conforms to our image. I know all about love, therefore I know all about God. We would never speak these words outright, but our mind has done the math all the same. We impose our categories on God rather than allowing him to provide the eternal meaning.
When the scriptures say “God is love” it's an invitation to discover love in him. This week I’m going to put my understanding in the tomb and wait to see what love looks like when it’s resurrected.
Monday's Meditation: Love of Knowledge, or Knowledge of Love?
Monday, August 30, 2010 at 12:35AM 
It’s perhaps foolish to present three posts on the same subject within eight days, but so far I’ve been unable to deliver the baby. Last Monday: “An omniscient God is not impressed with the size of our intellect” Thursday: “What if our approach to following Jesus is fueled by the world’s idea of wisdom?” And today I wonder still whether we have chosen a worldly method to pursue the King of Heaven.
The spirit of this age respects knowledge. It’s a given. Knowledge trumps ignorance. Knowledge is power. Knowledge is self-authenticating. When we bring the spirit of this age to our study of Scripture we emphasize the texts which serve the value of knowledge. “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge . . .” How many books have opened with Hosea 4:6 as a call to study?
We have loved knowledge since the Garden of Eden. Perhaps we have loved knowledge more than we have loved our Creator. In our day the western church presents a view of discipleship based upon ever-increasing knowledge, and Christianity becomes a subject to be mastered. As a result those who are smartest become the best disciples. The spirit of this present age tells us knowledge is good because it is knowledge. But what if the smartest among us know nothing of love?
Yet woven into the fabric of the Biblical witness is the still small voice of relationship. It warns of the dangers of knowledge. “Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up” comes the whisper. Later on the voice grows: "Where there is knowledge, it will pass away.” We discover the voice coming from Paul’s prayer closet interceding on our behalf, “I pray that you . . . may have power . . . to know this love that surpasses knowledge.” Perhaps we can learn from Paul--one of the greatest minds in history--that knowledge can never drive us to love.
Will you join me? I’ll continue meditating as the week goes on: what if true knowledge grows from love, and what if apart from love knowledge cannot be true?
The Most Excellent Way
Thursday, August 12, 2010 at 11:16AM There’s a wedding in town this Saturday, so I have at least a fifty per cent chance of hearing someone read 1 Corinthians 13 out loud. You know the passage, right? “If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. . . ”
No one has been comfortable with a simple “yes” or “no” but everyone has an opinion: “Oh, that’s the ideal, no one could ever do that . . . Well, the Bible says ‘all things are possible’ so I suppose so . . . On our own strength, absolutely no. With God, absolutely yes.”
Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.We want to believe these words. They fill us with hope. They remind us of what is best. They point to a life fulfilled. But we have also seen the worst, experienced the disappointment and felt the pain. Do we dare believe? When the scripture reads like poetry we are tempted to dismiss the revelation. When our life experience contradicts the good news, experience can trump the truth. Is it possible that faith, hope, and love really are the things that remain? If they remain, can we attain them? Receive them? Live them?
When I go to the wedding Saturday I will listen to the beauty of the scripture with a few practical thoughts also in mind. Perhaps they could help you answer my survey question as well:
“I will show you the most excellent way.” (1 Corinthians 12: 31) It’s easy to miss this verse because it's at the end of chapter twelve, but Paul wanted us to know from the very start that love is a way. It’s a path. With a guide we can learn the way. If we expect love to magically overtake our hearts and change our lives, we are taking to the whitewater of life--out of control. But if love is truly a way, we can learn from others how to navigate the river of life. Consider the people Paul first wrote--the church in Corinth was a confused mess of relationships and envy, debauchery and religion. Yet Paul said, “I will show you the way. You can learn how to love like this.” If the people of Corinth could learn the ways of God’s love, why can’t I?
Tongues, prophecy and knowledge amount to nothing apart from love. How many of us mistake personal spirituality, anointing or intelligence as the things that remain? No. In order to learn a life of love, we must first recognize what will last and what will not. Ministry is for this present age; love is forever. Ask any pastor, social worker or physician--you can minister to anyone without actually loving them. Yet when ministry is infused with love there is eternal effect. Anything else is smoke and mirrors.
Love never fails. These three words reveal the way things really are. “To align yourself with love is to align yourself with God,” songwriter Adam Russell observed, “because God is love.” To align yourself with love is to align yourself with victory, because love never fails. Was the Apostle Paul writing a Hallmark card or trying to explain the reality of God’s Kingdom? Are these words true, or just beautiful sentimentality? Do we sit in the wedding ceremony and hear these words as God’s promise to the bride and groom, or do we quietly think, “they will find out what life is really like soon enough”? Does our failure have the authority to nullify the truth? Here’s a meditation: what if it’s really true that love never fails?
Who can show us the way? Hidden within the crazy letter to the Corinthians is a deep truth of the Kingdom of God: there are some who have broken through the spirit of this age, and they can show us how it’s done. There are some who have learned a new way to live. “Be imitators of me,” Paul says in 1 Corinthians 11:1, “just as I also am of Christ.” We can learn God’s ways--including the way of love. Nor is it merely book learning. God’s wisdom may be found in the scripture, but it blossoms into life when we find mentors in the Kingdom. The Lord never intended us to go it alone: “Here’s the Bible. Good luck.” That just isn’t how he does things. Whatever demands the scripture may place on us are met with possibility there is someone who can help us make things real in everyday life. Ask God to show you the trail guide for your life. It’s called discipleship, and it’s the way of the Kingdom.
Perhaps these ideas are the reasons no one ventured a simple yes or no answer to whether we can attain the love in 1 Corinthians 13. We instinctively know it is true, while we instinctively know we cannot do it alone. We were never meant to: love isn’t meant to alone.