Monday, October 7, 2019

Loving God

When you made the decision to love God, was that an easy choice or a hard one? Did you come to it after years of prayer and searching or was it an instant love affair? Have you "accepted" Christ, but you're not sure yet if that was really a decision of love or something else?

What about...this morning? What about today when you made the decision to love God again? Or still. Or have you made a decision today to love God?

Do you only make decisions to love God on days when you're actively engaged with Him? You know, like Sundays. Or days when you have to pray. Or days when you need Him for something. Or those rare days when you're just thankful? 

It's complicated, right? This whole Christian life we live is rather difficult, when you think about it. First, we have to figure out how to love God. Then, we have to figure out how to love Him again. And again. And again. And still. Until every day, we love Him, but only, you know, when we're actively thinking about Him, which means that the first thing that we have to figure out when we try to bring God into our lives in a new moment is whether we love Him or not. It's like we have to ask ourselves over and over again; we don't just wake up loving Him. 

If we did, we'd spend all day every day with Him. Thinking about Him. Talking to Him. Texting Him. Smiling at all the little reminders of Him. 

So let's just be honest with ourselves: we don't just "automatically" love God, even when we love Him. Even when we're Christians. We love the idea of God, but put us face-to-face with our need for Him, and we have to decide all over again, it seems, if we love Him. 

What if it weren't that hard? What if it wasn't supposed to be? 

Because, you see, there's a cheat code wired into your very DNA for this exact thing. God Himself has done it. 

He has put it on your heart to love Him (Jeremiah 32).

Think about that for a second. When God created you, when He knit you together in your mother's womb, when He started counting the hairs on your head before you even grew them, He built into your very being an inclination to love Him. 

Which means that all this hesitation we have, all these catch-your-breath moments, all this time we spend trying to figure out if we love Him or not...it's mess. It's distraction. It's the things of this world, the trials of this life, casting shadows in the way. Of course we love Him. 

We love Him in the same way that our hair is brown or our eyes are green or our eyebrows are straight across. Sure, we can dye our hair or get colored contact lenses or pluck and tweeze our brows into some kind of shape - sure, we can choose not to love Him, but our default setting...is love. It's just natural. 

And if it's natural, is it really as hard as we're making it? If God has given us to love Him, built it into our very beings, wired it into our circuitry...why do we act like we have to do it out of our own volition? Why do we act like we have to make ourselves love God?

No, no. We just have to let ourselves love Him. 

Although, sometimes, I think that's harder.... 

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