Love You So Much Jesus?

Loving the Lord is a wonderful journey which will bring you into a few stages over time. It's an interesting progression, yet daunting one at times, when many who aren't fully in love with the Lord tend to stumble in the 'refining fire' where God tests our faith and love for Him.

Like any relationship, we enter with a blazing love and zeal for the Lord, as we are simply elated to know that the Lord is REAL! That HE loves us! and that we are chosen by Him to be children of God and so on. We, our hearts in all simplicity, and like children, just fall in love with the Saviour of our lives, and we are unfazed in our pursuit of Him. We press on with all our might, our total being is turned towards HIM and HE becomes the only source of life for us. Our everything.

Then slowly, the relationship cools, or begins facing a few hiccups. We start realising how much change this has brought into our lives - our past is gone and we are made new. While we are absolutely happy for this new life, we are apprehensive of what's to come. What's next Lord? Is there going to be a downhill spiral from here? Is there going to be more trials that test my Love for You? We sometimes ponder.

At this point - we are beginning to be tested for our faith. God says, if you love me, feed my sheep.. if you love me, obey my commandments. When our relationship with God becomes deeper, ironically, our sinfulness and old ways are suddenly uncovered by the light of God shining into all the dark areas of our lives. We are faced with the need for change, tranformation, conversion. This is where the struggle begins. Because change and conversion is not easy.

When faced with conversion issues, we have to do many things. We have to be humble, and accept that God is right. We have to yield to the Holy Spirit, including Surrender, Trust, Depending on Him alone, have Faith, and Obey God's will.... why? because, we know that is the path towards freedom & salvation. We know it but the hard part is doing it.

So then, we'll realise that perhaps, our love for the Lord isn't as deep as we thought it was. And we are faced with some sort of guilt and uncertainty about our spirituality. We feel cold. We wonder how we even got here in the first place. We might get a bit lost... or we might even feel disappointed with ourselves for not being as Holy as we ought to be. We struggle between right and wrong - because the difference now seems so clear to us (when before we never realised even that wrong was actually wrong).

And then in our deepest pits, God calls out to us again and assures us with his everlasting and unconditional love.

HE tells us to leave all our anxieties because He cares for us. He tells us that even though we've been unfaithful (not being able to obey, trust him, depend on him, worship him alone), HE still loves us.

So what kind of God and lover is Jesus? A mighty God. A fearsome lover. He is our God and king and also our best friend and our most trusted brother. But then... the challenge is to LOVE HIM BACK - with all our heart, soul, mind and body.

Till we can do that, we won't experience the liberating freedom that our hearts so desire.

So when, will we all begin loving Jesus like never before?

I pose this question to myself. In my reflection, I have found, that my love for the Lord has been far from deep, far from perfect. Perhaps, even shallow, lip-service, selfish.

What can we do to Love the Lord with our total lives and beings? What do we need to lay down before the Cross? our sinfulness, tiredness, and perhaps, even all our good deeds that we did, for ourselves instead of Him.

Let's just be present, worshipping the Lord daily.. to love Him for Him. And He'll give us strength to change, to be obedient, to follow the Lord and do God's will in our lives!