When a person loves someone, he enjoys talking to the one he loves always, regardless of the occasion. However, there will be things that lovers cannot share when others are present. There may be no need to keep these things away from others, but the nature of love demands that some things be kept for sharing in private. The greater the love between two people, the more they have things to share, and the more they have things to share that they want to share in private. Lovers need times of withdrawal from others in order to find fulfilment. If two lovers are compelled to live their lives always in the presence of others, they will know a certain degree of frustration.
When lovers meet, they explore each other. They explore each other’s thoughts, desires, motives, likes, dislikes, and so on. There is a limitless desire to know each other. There is a burning desire in each to know the other more and more and there is a burning desire in each to let the other know him for who he is. This makes it more and more necessary for them to spend time together, and the more time they spend together, the more the love between them grows, and this in turn causes them to want to spend more time together. The time they spend together is never enough and they never separate without deciding when they will next meet.
God’s purpose in creation and redemption is to have man love Him. He wants man as His lover. He loves man. He knows all about man. He has paid a supreme price in Christ Jesus for the redemption of man. He came from heaven to seek man so as to restore man to proper a relationship with Him. Having done this, God wants the response of man. He wants man to seek Him, know Him and love Him. Those who seek Him find Him. Those who desire Him have Him, and those who love Him give all of themselves to Him in unconditional obedience. That love for Him moves them to seek Him more and more and desire Him all the more.
Human beings meet and fall in love. There may be no rational basis for the emotion. It may happen in one go and a person is totally swept off his feet. Loving the Lord is not like that. Loving the Lord is not a whimsical, unpredictable and uncontrollable emotion. It is not something that just happens. Loving God is the fruit of great cultivation. It is the flow of the human spirit in a direction agreed upon by the spirit and the soul and controlled by the will. The love of God is not the love of feeling, but the love of willing. People will to love God. As they will to love Him, they set their minds on Him and their emotions follow. I am not saying that loving God does not involve the emotions. It will and it does involve the emotions, but it does not begin there. The Holy Spirit moves the human spirit which then moves the human will. The human will decides to will to love the Lord or not to will to love Him. When the will wills to love Him, the will gets the mind to concentrate on Him and then, because the whole personality is bent in that direction the emotions flow in that direction too. This will result in the whole person: spirit, will, mind and emotions loving the Lord.
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If loving the Lord were merely a matter of emotions, then the command to love the Lord would not make sense; for emotions are not easily commanded. The Bible says, “And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul and with all your might” (Deuteronomy 6 : 5). This verse is saying that you shall love the Lord with all your spirit (heart), with all your will, mind and emotions (soul) and with all your physical body (might). The emotions are involved. They follow the direction in which the will and the mind are set.
This means that loving the Lord will not happen in one go. It is the fruit of training – of deliberate choice. It is not an accident. People choose to love the Lord or not to love Him. They choose by willing. When they will to love the Lord, they begin to love Him and the more they continue to will to love Him, the more they grow in love for Him, for, willing to love the Lord will go along with corresponding action.
If you desire to love the Lord, you can love Him. If you want to love Him supremely, you can. You can get started today. Will you love Him ? Have you decided that you are going to allow a loving relationship to develop between Him and you ? If you have decided to love Him, put all your eggs into the one basket of loving Him. Hold nothing back. The problem is that many have not yet decided to love Him. They may still be thinking about it. They have some other goal for their lives. The one who will succeed in loving the Lord will have only one goal for his life, and that goal will be to love the Lord. Only then will he give his all to loving Him.
A person with two or three goals can manage to make some success with each of them. He may attain good heights with each of the three ambitions but he cannot reach the summit with all of them. He may reach the summit with only one. When a person finds out that there are two ambitions in his life that rival with each other, he must do one thing if he is to succeed. He must destroy one of them. It may be a good ambition. It may be one that could bring great blessings, but if it rivals the one great ambition of his life, then it must be eliminated. You cannot put your eggs into two baskets and have both of them. You need to sit down and decide what you want. After the decision is made, you have to give your all to it. You hold nothing back and life will hold nothing back from you.
This total abandonment to the one goal of loving the Lord will involve risks, but who has ever accomplished anything great without taking risks? All who want security, who will not move out unless they are very sure that things will be alright, will end up in mediocrity. Loving the Lord is a continuous act of faith, and faith takes risks. The greater the risks, then the greater the possibility of success or failure. But without the risks, no great things are accomplished. The singlehearted person puts all into loving the Lord and holds nothing back. If he succeeds, he succeeds in a big way, and if he fails, the failure is absolute.
So, decide that you will love the Lord with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your might. In order to accomplish that goal, you must give yourself all the time that it will take to know Him intimately. Then you will have to obey Him in all things. For both of these things, you need to spend more time with Him alone. He will talk to you. You will listen to Him. He will reveal Himself increasingly to you. You will know Him more and more and love Him more and more; for knowledge leads to love and love leads to more knowledge, which will lead to further and deeper love and, so it goes on and on. This need of time to hear Him and wait upon Him so as to know Him, love Him, obey Him and serve Him, makes spiritual retreats a must.
The Holy Spirit pours love for God into the human spirit. The human spirit then causes the human will to will to love the Lord.
The human mind is then brought to concentrate its thoughts on loving the Lord. The emotions then flow in the direction of loving the Lord. In this way the entire being flows in the direction of loving the Lord.
