Posts Tagged ‘God’s love’
love experiential
I was having lunch with a friend… eating well and having good conversation. And we slowly migrated to talking about God… and eventually to discussing what it means to really connect with God. And the question came up, “How do you really experience God’s love?”
I wasn’t all that sure how to respond. If there was a formula they didn’t teach us that in school. And my friend and I have been in the “church world” long enough to know all the pat answers [ie. more Bible and more prayer].
I thought back [quickly] to moments of very tangibly experiencing God’s love. Times where it felt unmistakably other-worldly. A mix of euphoria, liberation and embrace. Inebriated, but never losing yourself. Soaring in the clouds, but well grounded in reality. And you can’t help but to mutter to yourself… “Man, He loves me… He really loves me.”
And the only response I could think of was this… it seems like most experiences of God’s love are associated with some degree of surrender. The heart or will’s need to resign… to give in… to give up… to yield to whatever God is going to do – good or bad.
rise up and come away [reigniting a fire]
As I’m reluctantly doing my ordination work, I’m reading through a book that I read a while back… a book that I found really hard to read and not terribly original. But reading it again this time around, I’m finding it to be pretty invigorating. It’s “The Pursuit of God” by AW Tozer. One of the prophetic pillars of the CMA.
One of the endorsements on the back from the Steve Green:
“The writings of Tozer shake me from slumber, inspire grand thoughts of God and expose the compromise in my heart.”
Yikes, who wants that.
A prayer that I’ve been praying these days from chapter 1 of the book is:
O God, I have tasted Thy goodness, and it has both satisfied me and made me thirsty for more. I am painfully conscious of my need of further grace. I am ashamed of my lack of desire. O God, the Triune God. I want to want Thee; I long to be filled with longing; I thirst to be made more thirsty still. Show me Thy glory, I pray Thee, that so I may know Thee indeed. Begin in mercy a new work of love within me. Say to my soul, “Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away.” Then give me grace to rise and follow Thee up from this misty lowland where I have wandered so long. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
Two things sort of jarring me this past month:
