You may know from reading my testimony, that for many years of my Christian life, I did not have a passionate relationship with God. My heart was passionate about many OTHER things—my work, my kids, my image, my success—but NOT God.
I was afraid to surrender my whole heart to God!
Why did I have this irrational fear of surrendering to the ONE who died for me? Well, in a nutshell—because I had not come to know God for who He is. This is a process. The Bible says that perfect love casts out fear. (1 John 4:18) Our enemies don’t want us to discover freedom from fear. Perhaps that’s why the most loving commandment Jesus gives us is to “love the Lord with ALL our heart, soul, and mind.” (Matthew 22:34-35) God does not want us to live in fear! When we make Him the center of our life, we grow in the knowledge of His love for us which teaches us how to better love Him. Keeping God as our center is definitely a struggle. But when we find ourselves losing our strong sense of the PEACE which is produced by God’s presence, it’s a huge clue that something else has become our center.
God has such a glorious purpose for us!
But our enemies are constantly at work to prevent us from being all we can be for God’s glory. Our enemies want us to miss out on all the good that God has for us when He is our center like—HIS love, joy, peace, wisdom and strength! That’s why we must be constantly reordering our loves. The Bible says:
“Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—is not of the Father but is of the world…”
1 John 2:15-17
Since we are willing to reorder our loves in order to accomplish SECULAR goals—don’t you think it’s even more important to do it for SPIRITUAL goals? For example, even if we love sleeping in—we get up early to go to work so we can make money. Or, even if we love rich foods—we cut calories if we want to lose weight.
We make sacrifices for what we want.
We surrender ourselves to feed our passion. And when we surrender ourselves to living in loving obedience to God, we are surrendering to the best Master! The more we do this, the clearer we see God for who He is and the more we know how much we depend upon Him for everything! We become “poor in spirit” so we can be rich in God’s presence—like we just discussed in the BE-Attitudes!
We cannot afford to live allowing our enemies to define our greatest friend—Jesus!
We cannot allow the failures we’ve experienced in love to darken our view of God’s love. God does not betray us—like the spouse who failed us. God’s love does not fall short—like the parent who got it wrong. God’s love does not fail us—like the child who rejected the best we had to give.
God has seen and felt every crime committed against His love and yet—He still desires us.
This is personal. God has felt the sting of our rejection. He feels the pain when we love the things of the world more than we love Him. In fact, I’m ashamed to admit that I have prayed and asked Him for THINGS—more than I have prayed and asked Him to give me more LOVE for Him. Ugh! That’s like my child asking me for enough money to get away from me or a woman asking her husband for money to spend on her lover! But…
The more we set our mind to experience God’s presence—the greater our desire grows to surrender to Him!
God offers us His strong hand of help even when we act like a spoiled child and slap it aside. He doesn’t pout, throw up His holy hands, and give up. On the day we were born again, He became our forever Father! We belong to Him.
God paid a priceless sacrifice to secure our place in His family.
This bond is unbreakable:
“Neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Romans 8:38-39
When we find a deep and abiding relationship with God, we quit searching for satisfaction in anyone or anything else.
God’s deep and abiding love casts out our fears and makes us passionate about loving Him with ALL our heart, soul, and mind!
