love of God

I love the LORD, because he has heard my voice and my pleas for mercy...

When I was brought low, he saved me...

For you have delivered my soul from death, my eyes from tears, my feet from stumbling...

You have loosed my bonds

~Psalm 116:1,6,8,16

Do I love the Lord? Sure, I praise Him. Sure, I worship Him. Sure, I thank Him. Sure, I commune with Him. But do I love Him?

Does He captivate my thoughts? Does He stir the affections of my heart? Do my emotions gravitate toward Him? Is He what I long for? Is He the One I pursue?

All of the Lord's marvelous deeds in my life and throughout the course of history should spur me to love the Him. It is what the psalmist in saying in Psalm 116. And at the very root of it all is my salvation. If I am not drawn to love God as a result of what Christ has done for me, then something is dangerously wrong.

I spent the last year studying God. And that is only the beginning. For the next three years, I will continue studying Him. And in the midst of all my studying, I found it surprisingly easy to make love not a factor. I could read and read about all of who God is (from the human perspective, which is still vastly limited) and walk away without my love for Him expanding. I could taste His goodness to me again and again without thinking twice about it. I was able to isolate my brain and my heart from one another. Reading and studying lead to knowledge, but knowledge often failed to bring about fear and love.

I want to love God: Father, Son, and Spirit. I am not satisfied with a label (Christian, seminary student, etc.). I am more than capable of successfully fitting any of those molds and leaving love for God out of it, for it is my natural bent. I want to love Him for as He is. I want to love Him for what He has done. I want to prayerfully and boldly proclaim.

I love the LORD