Passion In Pieces

It’s Valentine’s Day, again. This time last year I was thinking much more about loving a person than loving God. But, of course, whenever you pray for God to bring you closer to Him, as I had prayed, He always shows you what you’re lacking. My diagnosis: an inadequate understanding of what it means to have “passion” for Him. I thought I knew, but was just working on getting there. But circumstances in my life, coupled with Psalm 63: 1-8 (which reappeared in devotional books and song lyrics about once a week for a few months), gave me a clue. Read David’s definition of intimacy with God:

1 O God, you are my God,
earnestly I seek you;
my soul thirsts for you,
my body longs for you,
in a dry and weary land
where there is no water.
2 I have seen you in the sanctuary
and beheld your power and your glory.
3 Because your love is better than life,
my lips will glorify you.
4 I will praise you as long as I live,
and in your name I will lift up my hands.
5 My soul will be satisfied as with the richest of foods;
with singing lips my mouth will praise you.
6 On my bed I remember you;
I think of you through the watches of the night.
7 Because you are my help,
I sing in the shadow of your wings.
8 My soul clings to you;
your right hand upholds me.

I’m sure I’d read or heard this passage some time before this past year, but it hadn’t resonated. Some parts were familiar—the praising God, loving Him, beholding his glory. But the body longing and the thinking through the watches of the night—those were things I didn’t really think about with God. But the message really is Lord, you are all I need. Nothing else. And not only do I need you, I long to know you with everything I am and have—my body, my mind, my soul; my LIFE. As I meditated on the passage for weeks, it really did make sense. I started to feel passion for God in ways I hadn’t ever—at least not in recent memory. In this year since last Valentine’s Day, I’ve seen my relationship with God become more about simply knowing Him.

I’ve always been wary of casually saying I love God. As my pastor profoundly pointed out, throughout the Bible God does not define love by word, but by deed; it’s not what you say, it’s what you do. I love the perspective 1 John 2: 3-6 brings:

We know that we have come to know him if we obey his commands. The man who says, "I know him," but does not do what he commands is a liar, and the truth is not in him. But if anyone obeys his word, God's love is truly made complete in him. This is how we know we are in him: Whoever claims to live in him must walk as Jesus did.

Jesus also said in John 14:15: “If you love me, you keep my commands."

Think about it: if a person says “I care about you” but never does anything to show it, do you ever really believe that person? Yet we often think we can do that with God: List Him among our “favorite things,” go to church on Sunday but live totally different on Monday—say we love Him—but then not do what He says. I look at how much I have to change, and sometimes I feel that claiming to love Him is akin to lying…

But then I look where I was—even a year ago—and I see how God is showing me how to really love Him. He’s giving me more opportunities to serve Him, and I’m taking them. I’m waking up in the morning, and knowing something’s not right if I haven’t spent time with Him before I start my day. He’s speaking to me, and I’m trying to listen. I now conceive of Psalm 63 intimacy, so now He’s teaching me something else, this time in seven words: “The just shall live by his faith” (Habakkuk 2:4b). I’m learning to make Him my passion—piece by piece.