One of the common experiences for every Christian can be captured in a sentence we’ve all used at one time or another.
“I just don’t think I love God like I should”
I’ve noticed something about this experience of insufficient love for God in my life and in counseling others. I hardly ever hear it come out of my mouth or hear it spoken by others when we are in trial. We say a lot of things, but we don’t typically assess the quality of our love for God in trials. Come to think of it, we don’t often wonder about whether we love God sufficiently when things are going really well, either. For example, I don’t think the thought has ever even crossed my mind on vacation.
No, a sense of deficiency in love for God seems to be most easily felt in those ‘okay’ seasons of life – when things are neither really great or really hard. Which for most of us is a good portion of our experience. I think this may be one of those experiences for which Paul’s exhortation in Romans 12:11 is meant, ‘Do not be slothful in zeal, be fervent in spirit, serve the Lord”.
The temptation with this sense of deficient love for Christ is that we’ll tend to either beat ourselves up over it, or try to drum up affections that feel like love – which usually ends with us beating ourselves up anyway. Instead, consider this great ‘kick start’ advice from John Newton:
“You complain, ‘Alas, I love Him so little.’… But I can give you good advice and good news: love Him as well as you can now, and erelong you shall love Him indeed. If you want to love Him better now while you are here, I believe I can tell you the secret how this is to be attained: trust Him. The more you trust Him, the better you will love Him. If you ask, farther, ‘How shall I do to trust Him?’, I answer, try Him: the more you make trial of Him, the more your trust in Him will be strengthened. Venture upon His promises; carry them to Him and see if He will not be as good as His word. But, alas! Satan and unbelief work the contrary way. We are unwilling to try Him, and therefore unable to trust Him, and what wonder, then, that our love is faint, for who can love at uncertainties? (John Newton – Letter 3, undated, The Voice of the Heart, 209)
Try Him….Trust Him…and you will love Him.
No comments:
Post a Comment