An Embarrassment of Riches

I am with Leah almost every day.  We laugh, we talk, we hug, we kiss...and at the end of every date, neither of us wants to let the other go.  We know it must happen, but every parting is an exercise in willpower.  It doesn't matter that we know we'll see each other tomorrow, even if it's in the morning, such as it will be later today (oh the joys of typing past midnight!).

Why is it not like this with God?

When I'm with Leah, I feel amazing.  I'm entranced by her.  Every new thing she tells me about herself has my full attention.  Every serious conversation we have, every time we get lost in each other's eyes, even when we just watch a movie cuddling together on the couch - she is wonderful to be with no matter what we're doing.  I feel like I have an embarrassment of riches with her because of her intellect, sense of humor, how well we match, and how accepting she is of my flaws.  These would be enough already for me to fall for her, but she's generous, beautiful, humble, easy to please, and has several of the same hobbies I do.  That phrase, "waiting for the other shoe to drop" doesn't apply here because I'm still waiting for the first one to drop.  I'm not naive enough to think she's perfect - I'm learning her flaws as she's learning mine - but she's such a great match for me that I find myself in awe.

The problem is that, while I recognize she is a gift from God, I don't seem to realize in my heart that He couldn't have matched me up so perfectly if He didn't know me better than I know myself or if He didn't love me more than I love myself.  I have to fight to keep from losing sight of the Giver in the celebration of the gift.  I know in my head how important it is to keep God first, yet my heart seems to always have different ideas, self-destructive ideas of seeking joy and contentment everywhere but the true Source of them.

And all of this brings me back to my earlier question of why I can't feel the same about God as I do with her.

Don't get me wrong.  I love God.  Between God and Leah, I would choose God.  Yet I don't have the same passion for God that I do for her.  When my Bible study time ends in the morning, my thought is, "Ok, what do I want for breakfast?" not, "When can I do that again?  Tomorrow is too far away."

The problem is that I don't see Him for who He is.  I see Him still as the source of things that can give me happiness rather than the source of my joy and comfort itself.  I don't see Him as wonderful, merely His gifts.  In an effort to change that, or rather to at least begin the process of change, I'm going to go through some of the aspects and roles of God.

First, and the only one I'll get to today, is that He is a God of goodness.  He could have let us burn for choosing ourselves over Him, yet He redeemed us at the cost of His own life.  Imagine that you sign a contract with someone in which you'll wash his car, do his laundry, clean his house, cook his meals, and do all his shopping every day for fifty years and, if you can do all of these things flawlessly for that entire time, he'll pay you $100 million.  One mistake, though, and you get nothing.  You start in on the cleaning and on just the third day, you leave a smudge on his car.  Instead of tossing you aside, he cleans the smudge, then agrees to do all the chores required of you, does them perfectly, and hands you the money that you didn't deserve.  He made a covenant with you originally, then superseded his covenant by paying your share of it.  All you have to do is let Him.

Our deal with God is even more generous than that.  We get Heaven for eternity rather than the penalty for our sins.  We get life instead of death.  And we have to do nothing but believe in Him and accept the gift.

If God stopped there, that would be so much more than we deserve.  He's only just beginning, though.  This is not a name-it, claim-it message, but God wants to give you good things, beginning with more of Him.  He wants you to take hold of His strength (Isaiah 27:5) and ask Him for wisdom (James 1:5).  He wants you to come to Him for your needs because He wants to fill those needs with good things (Matthew 7:11).  He offers a relationship with Him, peace, wisdom, and our needs being met.  These may not always be our earthly needs (much less the desires we've misclassified as leads), but they are always what is truly best for us.

The children of Israel saw ten plagues on Egypt before Pharaoh let them go.  Then they saw the parting of the Red Sea and the pillar of cloud by day and fire by night.  They ate manna from Heaven and still they complained against God ten times within the first year, so God said only Joshua and Caleb would see the Promised Land of all who were 20 years or older.  Yet even though God had said they'd die in the wilderness, neither their clothes nor their sandals wore out.  God protected them throughout.  He let them eat manna, even after they spoke against Him.  He still led them with the pillar.  At every turn, God is gracious to them, giving them much more than just salvation.

Manna didn't have to taste like honey cakes, but the Bible says it did.  It was apparently delicious.  That was an unnecessary blessing.  It could have tasted like plain oatmeal and it would have been a miracle.  God just wanted to be good to them.  God is not the God of just enough, but of abundantly more than you could ever dream of.  At every opportunity, He is good to you without fail.  Once we realize that in our hearts, we can start to desire the other aspects of God.  Next post, we will discuss God's attention to detail.

My Tank Runneth Over

In The Five Love Languages, Gary Chapman presents a concept he calls the "love tank."  It's the idea that in order to love someone, you have to have love in your love tank.  Your tank is depleted whenever you love someone and is refilled whenever you are loved.  It explains why it's so difficult for those who feel unloved to love others and why those who feel very loved can more easily do it.

One note I'd like to make on it, though, is that many Christians want to pour out a pure love for others, yet don't have enough pure love flowing in.  Imagine that you are a waiter or waitress going around the restaurant refilling people's glasses with water.  They want pure, clean water, yet you got the water from a rusty tap and the pitcher you're using had been used as a makeshift flower vase but wasn't washed afterward.  What are the odds that the water you're pouring out is even close to pure?

Your love is no different.  You can't give out any better or purer than you're receiving.  To truly love others, to give them what they really need, you have to be getting what you really need.  We so often look for love from other people and seek to fill our love tanks with friends, relationships, and family, yet we don't realize that all this love, wonderful as it may feel, is still contaminated if it is only human.  Love is only pure if it comes from the source of all love, God.  He can show His love through others, certainly, but these others have to have received it from Him.  You can't give what you don't have yourself.

I'm not going to offer the overly simplistic advice of "just get in the Word and pray" if you want to love God more.  It's good and necessary, but your relationship with God should be alive and real, not formulaic.  Besides, I'm still working out how to desire Him more myself.  This post is just to offer another reason we all need Him.  :)