Kindling Your Love for God

My husband, Glen, travels often. When he’s away I look forward to having more space in my days for quiet contemplation, and I schedule appointments that I wouldn’t have a chance to keep if Glen were home. Should you happen to meet me on one of those days you’d find me cheerful and busy (sometimes frazzled and anxious). But there would be something about me that you wouldn’t necessarily know right up front. When Glen is away, I am in a state of waiting. With all my heart, I can’t wait until I see him again! Whether I am sleeping or awake, I am very aware of his absence, and I miss him. He is my beloved.

Nineteenth century Scottish author George MacDonald said, “I wait, asleep or awake, I wait.” I picture him listening—always listening for the voice of God. The voice of the Beloved.

When I was 13 years old, I read The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe by C. S. Lewis and fell in love with Aslan. I was so impressed with the noble character and love of Aslan that, many times, I would go into my closet, close the door and wait. I was waiting for the back of the closet to open up so I could get into Narnia and meet him! It was many years before I understood the symbolism in my actions. I was in a closed, dark space, waiting to meet a loving God who would find me, free me, fulfill me and give my life significance.

Most of us are aware of the importance of the discipline of waiting on God. And we know that we must immerse ourselves in Scripture so the living Word of God can write our lives. But are we aware that the whole purpose of waiting on God is to grow deeper in love with him? It is so sweet to enter your “closet” and find yourself in a new country—and find that the King of that country has spread a banquet before you and invited you to eat at his table. David said, in Psalm 23, “You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. You anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.”

Do you want God?

The key element in growing in love for God is desire. There must be a desire within you that motivates you to seek out God’s company, and you must have an awareness that God desires to seek out yours!

Whenever we enter into a relationship, we do so motivated by some sense of who the other person is. Naturally we don’t pursue relationships by walking our fingers down the phone book and picking a random name! There is some pull or attraction for us when we seek out another person. It’s the same way in our relationship with God.

Who is God? I didn’t really know for many years, even after becoming a Christian. I actually pursued him more before I became a believer than I did for many years after, because I became confused about who he really is.

Know the real God

This is something of who God says he is in Scripture:

In Exodus 34:6-7, God revealed to Moses his name as “the Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin.”

Psalm 103 talks about God’s character:

Praise the Lord, O my soul; all my inmost being, praise his holy name. Praise the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits—who forgives all your sins and heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the pit and crowns you with love and compassion, who satisfies your desires with good things so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s.

The Lord works righteousness and justice for all the oppressed.

He made known his ways to Moses, his deeds to the people of Israel: the Lord is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love. He will not always accuse, nor will he harbor his anger forever; he does not treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities.

For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his love for those who fear him; as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us.

As a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him.

This name of God was fleshed out in the person of Jesus. Hebrews 1:1-3 explains it like this:

In the past God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom he made the universe. The son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word. After he had provided purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the majesty in heaven.

Confused & Cluttered

As I said, I was confused about who God really was. It was one thing to wait expectantly in my dark closet for a God I could only imagine; it was another to find out who he was through others. My big mistake early in my journey was to seek out God solely through my brothers and sisters rather than to keep waiting to meet with him myself. Don’t misunderstand me; community is vital to our growth as believers, but we have to know God in person before we can participate in community in a healthy way. Like a stained-glass window, you can’t have the whole picture without each piece—precisely colored and measured and shaped to fit a specific place in the design, and joined together just so. But each piece—each of us—needs to let in the light so the picture can be seen in all its glory. I didn’t do this. Once I’d met God and seen my inadequacies in the light of his Word, I wanted to remain opaque, rather than a lighted piece of stained glass. I began to measure myself by the lives of brothers and sisters rather than let God declare my worth and shine through me. I became legalistic. I looked at what God expected of me, rather than allowing him to make me into the person he meant for me to be all along. 2 Corinthians 10:12 describes my mistake: “We do not dare to classify or compare ourselves with some who commend themselves. When they measure themselves by themselves, they are not wise.” And verse 18 concludes, “For it is not the one who commends himself who is approved, but the one whom the Lord commends.”

My spiritual life grew cluttered. Imagine yourself as a new believer. You’ve just accepted Christ by grace and have been freed from the guilt that has so weighed you down. Your hands are empty! But then you use those free hands to pick up some new things along the way. You learn you need to have a regular quiet time. Great! You need to attend church, and then you join a small group. Okay so far. But then there are issues of social justice to concern yourself with, as well as the practice of stewardship of the earth and your gifts. There’s evangelism, and discipleship . . . and what about missions? Pretty soon, not only are your hands full, but you begin to drop some of those things. Then the guilt sets in. You set yourself up for a fall, and your hands are too full to grasp God’s hands as you go down!

I did fall, but I fell into the arms of God who really is all about what he said his name was: “the Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness.” I hadn’t grasped the truth of that name until the time of my fall. My fall finally came as the result of a serious illness. As I was on bed rest trying to recuperate, I began to cry over my lost opportunities to “do things for God.” It was at that moment that my husband, Glen, began to read me verse after verse about God’s grace and unconditional love. The knowledge of grace began to burn in my heart like a fresh-struck match. At first I was afraid to breathe in case the flame of belief would go out, but the flame grew in my heart and mind and lights my life to this day!

I came to know who I was to God, and to learn of his desire to love me! This was the beginning of a deeply satisfying, rich relationship with God.

Invited to the Table

There is a story in 2 Samuel 9 that can be our story. Every time I read it I am reminded of God’s grace and mercy and desire to love his people:

David asked a servant of Saul’s household, “Is there no one still left of the house of Saul to whom I can show God’s kindness?”

Ziba (the servant) answered the king, “There is still a son of Jonathan; he is crippled in both feet.”

“Where is he?” the king asked.

Ziba answered, “He is at the house of Makir son of Ammiel in Lo Debar.”

So king David had him brought from Lo Debar, from the house of Makir son of Ammiel.

When Mephibosheth son of Jonathan, the son of Saul, came to David, he bowed down to pay him honor.

David said, “Mephibosheth!”

“Your servant,” he replied.

“Don’t be afraid,” David said to him, “for I will surely show you kindness for the sake of your father Jonathan. I will restore to you all the land that belonged to your grandfather Saul, and you will always eat at my table.”

Mephibosheth bowed down and said, “What is your servant, that you should notice a dead dog like me?”

Then the king summoned Ziba, Saul’s servant, and said to him, “I have given your master’s grandson everything that belonged to Saul and his family. You and your sons and your servants are to farm the land for him and bring in the crops, so that your master’s grandson may be provided for. And Mephibosheth, grandson of your master, will always eat at my table.” (Now Ziba had fifteen sons and twenty servants.)

Then Ziba said to the king, “Your servant will do whatever my lord the king commands his servant to do.” So Mephibosheth ate at David’s table like one of the king’s sons.

David, a king who held the power of life and death over the helpless grandson of his enemy, chose to show mercy and compassion, and to care for him as a member of his own household!

For half of my Christian life I had questioned God, “What is your servant that you should notice a dead dog like me?” I wanted to be whole before I came to his table. I didn’t understand that healing came from partaking of the feast, and not before. Finally, I accepted my lameness and came to the table with thanksgiving. And God began to heal me as I met him there. Titus 3:4-7 says, “But when the kindness and love of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy. He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us generously through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that, having been justified by his grace, we might become heirs having the hope of eternal life.”

So we find that God’s desire comes first—his desire to greet us with love. And when we realize this, our desire to love him is kindled. In the Phillips translation of 1 John 3:1-2, we are encouraged to “Consider the incredible love that the Father has shown us in allowing us to be called ‘children of God’—and that is not just what we are called, but what we are. Our heredity on the Godward side is no mere figure of speech—which explains why the world will no more recognize us than it recognized Christ. . . . Here and now we are God’s children. We don’t know what we shall become in the future. We only know that, if reality were to break through, we should reflect his likeness, for we should see him as he really is.”

Catherine of Genoa wrote, “Knowledge of God’s love always comes in a rush—not through any action of our own will or intellect; it is all the recipient can do to bear the impact.” And we begin to meet God with expectancy. As we do, we will feel his gentle, powerful hand upon us, pressing us full of love until we begin to feel solid, substantial and safe. Winds of self-centeredness, fear, legalism and guilt can’t waft us out of his presence.

The more we wait on God, the more our love for him grows. But, as with every relationship, sometimes desire is not enough. Desire is certainly foundational, but there also needs to be the commitment to develop the relationship by making time and space for it to grow.

Henry Nouwen wrote, “A spiritual life requires discipline because we need to learn to listen to God, who constantly speaks but whom we seldom hear.

“When, however, we learn to listen, our lives become obedient lives. The word obedient comes from the Latin word audire, which means ‘listening.’ A spiritual discipline is necessary in order to move slowly from an absurd, ‘deaf’ life to an obedient, ‘listening’ life, from a life filled with noisy worries to a life in which there is some free inner space where we can listen to our God and follow his guidance.”

I remember being struck by something Madeleine L’Engle wrote in her novel, The Moon by Night. “In Texas one thing that seemed to make the distance look even distanter was the telephone poles, stretching out and out and out; the only reason you couldn’t go on seeing them forever was that they got so tiny in the distance they finally got too small to see and just merged with the land. That’s perspective, Uncle Douglas says. It seems very mysterious to me.”

You can love someone, but if you don’t make time to get close to that someone you can lose perspective and the distance grows. So much distance can come between you that your life is no longer filled with their presence. The other day I was browsing through some cards at a card shop, and ran across one that said something like, “I’m so glad you’re the kind of friend who understands when I don’t call or write!” Well, the friend may be understanding and faithful, but truthfully, the person who would send that card really isn’t enjoying the full benefit of the relationship. Friendship requires the discipline of investment—making time for each other so you can get to know one another better. Friendships falter and marriages grow stale for want of this simple discipline. If you don’t practice the habit of staying close, these relationships will get so tiny in your life that they’ll merge with the land and be lost to you. And this can happen in your relationship with God. Matthew 6:33 reminds us to “seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.” Augustine of Hippo said, “For when there is a question as to whether a man is good, one does not ask what he believes, or what he hopes, but what he loves.” How will we grow in our love for God? By making time to get close to him and letting him love us as he desires.

In Creation in Christ, George MacDonald wrote, “The fire of God, which is his essential being, his love, his creative power, is a fire unlike its earthly symbol in this, that it is only at a distance it burns—that the farther from him, it burns the worse, and that when we turn and begin to approach him, the burning begins to change to comfort, which comfort will grow to such bliss that the heart at length cries out with a gladness no other gladness can reach, ‘Whom have I in heaven but thee? And there is nothing upon earth that I desire besides thee!’”

Psalm 130:5-6 says, “I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in his word I put my hope. My soul waits for the Lord more than watchmen wait for the morning. . .” Let us be people who wait. Asleep or awake, let us wait for the Lord.

Beverly Ewart lives with her husband, Glen, and her children, Sean and Alyssa, in Upstate New York. She serves on staff with InterVarsity at St. Lawrence U. and Canton College. She loves reading and writing, but hates arithmetic!