Why my pride and God's love don't mix

True love is embodied in humility. God Himself didn´t mind appearing desperate in order to prove the sincerity of His affection. His heart longed for you almost to the point of “need” and thus He rushed to wash your feet and touch your blind eyes and sleep on the hard ground next to you. God wanted you…and so He let you mock Him, and slap His kind face, and nail His naked body to a cross. It is, in fact, the absence of pride that makes His love so powerful and undeniably pure! Empty of ulterior motives and ego, all He possessed to embrace us with was a great Love!

God-inspired falling in love requires that your pride fall away. God-inspired falling in love leads you to abandon your ego, drop to your knees and clean the dirty feet of the one you cherish.

There is a love that carries you up into dizzying happiness, but it is inevitably preceded by a Love that cast aside its crown and became your servant…Love that humbled itself and became obedient. Love can take you to heights, but only because it has traveled willingly to the depths. 

Yes, there is the exultant side to love, when the princess gets swept off her feet and basks in the care and gaze of One who adores her. But bear in mind, the only reason she can be gloriously ushered into a new life is because her Prince first threw himself down. He took the risk and humbly pursued her with everything He had.

Humility remains the only way to accept that kind of love and ultimately show that kind of love. As the princess grasps the essence of humility by witnessing the chivalrous example of her Prince, a divine romance becomes possible—a harmony of two souls who have made room for extravagant love by expelling all pride.   

“The more deeply you recognize that your pride cuts you off from God, the deeper the peace you will find.”  - J. Heinrich Arnold

His Hand

“Come, let me show you something.”

He took us by the hand and pulled us to our feet. That was the day I discovered I was ready to become something different. For the first time I realized I had been sitting down when I had been created to walk in love and twirl in joy and run in the sand with my hand in His.

Something changed when His hand reached for mine, when His warm fingers covered my cold ones. Everything changed. Everything seemed suddenly touched with possibility. The clasp was strength to me; the tenderness of it was inspiration.

Time passes and I can´t imagine my life without that hand. I trust the heart that compels me to follow His footsteps across rivers and through even desert waste places. I toss and turn in the dark sometimes and can´t see His hand…I let go. But His hand finds me and His grasp tells me that He doesn´t ever want to be separated again.

I love skipping at His side. When I´m weary, He carries me. Running through green pastures, He slows His pace and lets me catch my breath. He´ll stop and point at a tree or mountaintop that might be fun to climb. We head off hand in hand.

I have to wonder at times, “Would I still be sitting in that same place if He hadn´t come that day to show me what it´s like to live life holding His hand?”

"I the LORD have called thee in righteousness, and will hold thine hand, and will keep thee." Isaiah 42:6

What the Greatest Commandment Doesn't Say

Seven words with a type of magnetic quality. I keep being pulled back to them. The words click into my consciousness at least once a day and my brain cells fire anew trying to decipher why the phrase is so important, so unrelenting, so difficult to process and store neatly on the shelf. Why is this line of syllables distinct from the thousands of other lines of information traveling through my mind?

“Thou shalt love the Lord thy God…”  

Love Him. It doesn´t say…love the idea of Him. It doesn´t say…love what He does for you. It doesn´t say…love the blessings He bestows. It doesn´t say…love how He makes you feel. It doesn´t say…love the values that He taught.

It says LOVE HIM.

Love Him. It doesn´t say…acknowledge Him. It doesn´t say…think about Him every morning and sing about Him at church. It doesn´t say…obey Him. It doesn´t say…worship Him. It doesn´t even say…believe in Him with every fiber in your being. 

It says LOVE HIM.

The follow-up phrase drives the thought deeper. It describes a ridiculous level of loving. It articulates what true love requires. It depicts the passion-infused, life-consuming way in which He desires to be loved. Each mention of “ALL” seems to pierce our spiritual complacency…

"...with ALL your heart, ALL your soul, and ALL your mind."

My attention drifts, and then is drawn back. These words trouble me, but for some reason I can´t leave them alone. I realize that this verse intrigues and taunts me because it presents an impossibility. It shouts radicalness and depth of devotion that I am not only uncomfortable with, but completely incapable of.

Why in the world would He ask of us something that we are powerless to give?

Perhaps simply so that we would discover our need for the only One who makes impossible things possible. Love is the Truth, the Life, and the Only Way. This is what the greatest commandment DOES say!

Love in Darkness and Light

A girl kneeling alone on a hillside. Her brow reflects earnestness. You see the clasped hands and imagine that this girl must be one of those full of faith.

But I know differently. At heart this girl is full of doubts.

Words of prayer are sometimes too much for her to formulate because she questions the closeness of one who hears. She wonders whether it is complete craziness to speak phrases that are carried into nothingness on the winter winds. The miracles so recently touched are dimmed by the passing of days and by the darkness cast by faith´s enemy. The sense of separation from the object of her faith leaves only tearful questions to be cast skyward, “Is this real? Is it true?”

When I cannot muster passionate confidence in my praise and petitions, I am somehow yet compelled to that hillside. When God seems most aloof, His face hardly distinct, and His love just a fairytale, I pace back and forth, and refuse to leave. In those precise moments of doubting, the true meaning of faith and love slowly and brightly dawns.

On doubt-shrouded mornings, fog momentarily lets the first rays of the sun break forth. It sinks in, right then and there, that love has always been so much more than an exquisite feeling. Love is a decision, a commitment, a principle that surpasses feelings, and yet instigates feelings all at the same time. When God seeks to know the depth of your love, He may choose to withdraw the “warm feelings” and test the strength of love´s commitment. He may briefly take away the clarity, or the logic, or the fun of it all and prove whether the love principle still beats in our hearts. If we rush to embrace the commitment of love with as much sincerity and excitement as we embrace the feeling of love, God stops what He is doing to take notice…for He has found one who will not forsake loving Him in the dark, through the pain, during any trial, beneath the weight of the heaviest cross.

Many feel the love of God in moments, and maybe even feel love for Him back…but we stop short of engaging that love with all our heart, soul, and mind…we resist committing ourselves to its reality for life...through thick and thin, silences and doubt.       

"Behold, I go forward, but he is not there; and backward, but I cannot perceive him: On the left hand, where he doth work, but I cannot behold him: he hideth himself on the right hand, that I cannot see him: But he knoweth the way that I take: when he hath tried me, I shall come forth as gold." Job 23:8-10