Author: Wes White

Posted on

Loving God the Most: Loving God as God and People as People

When we love God above everything else, it means that we find our ultimate value, acceptance, security, delight, hope, blessing, and joy in Him. If we do this, our quest for these things is at an end. We don’t have to look for them in people.

The love of God has a practical result in human relationships. It enables us to accept people as they are. We can learn to say with the theologian Henri Nouwen, “Only God can give me what I want from another person” (Spiritual Direction, 122).

The lack of the love of God also has a practical result. We look for our ultimate value, acceptance, security, etc. in other people.

What’s wrong with doing that? They can’t provide those things for us. As Nouwen said, “If we do not know we are the beloved sons and daughters of God, we’re going to expect someone in the community to make us feel special and worthy. Ultimately, they cannot” (114). Confusion on this point is a recipe for conflict and frustration. Continue reading “Loving God the Most: Loving God as God and People as People”

Posted on

Loving God the Most: Making God Our Emotional Refuge

“Trust in him at all times, you people; pour out your hearts to him, for God is our refuge.” – Psalm 62:8

Where do you go with your strong emotions? A lof of times, they just run around in our head. They keep us from important duties, people, and fun. They cause problems with our health, our relationships, and our work.

Emotions need an outlet. We often seek an outlet in other people: withdrawing from them, attacking them, or complaining to them. We often seek outlets in busy-ness, trying to getour mind off of these things or solve them. We sometimes seek an outlet in trying to escape our issues, like endless hours of Netflix or alcohol. We often seek outlets in stres-reducers such as eating, exercise, sleep, planning, and so on.

Sometimes these things help. Sometimes they do not. Sometimes things gets worse. Sometimes our attempt to deal with our emotions hurts the people around us.

The Right Refuge for Our Emtions
The Psalms in the Bible give us a different picture of how to deal with our emotions. What the Psalms teach us is that emotions are not intended to remain on the horizontal plane. They are meant to go vertical. We are meant to resolve them in God.

The Psalms have a word for this. God is our refuge. God is an emotional refuge: “pour out your hearts to him, for God is our refuge” (Psalm 62:8). Continue reading “Loving God the Most: Making God Our Emotional Refuge”

Posted on

Loving God the Most: Making Jesus’ Priorities Ours

A classic object lesson of time management involves a jar with sand, pebbles, water, and big rocks. The first part of the lesson is to put in the pebbles, the sand, and the water. Then, you try to put in the big rocks. You can’t. It’s already full. However, if you start with the big rocks, you can then add the pebbles, the sand, and the water. The lesson? Put in your big rocks first.

When it comes to time management, you should always start with your big rocks. For example, if you value your children, you shouldn’t wait to the end of the week to find time for them. You probably won’t. But if you block out time for your kids each week, then you will be more likely to spend time with them. Plus, you’ll find that you get the other stuff done, too. The pebbles, sand, and water will fit in the jar just fine.

Once you understand that principle, you then need to discover what your big rocks are. What are the most important things in your life? Are they on your schedule? That’s how you make sure, as Goethe says, that “[t]hings which matter most” will “never be at the mercy of things which matter least” (cited in Stephen R. Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, 146).

The question I want to pose here is this, what big rocks would Jesus want you to put in first? One big part of loving God is making His priorities ours. What priorities does Jesus have that you do not? What would Jesus want to make sure is on your schedule that may not be there? What would He add to your schedule, if He was making your schedule for the week?

Big Rock #1: Telling People About Jesus
I want to suggest two big rocks that you need to put in your schedule first to align your priorities with Jesus’. The first is evangelism. This means getting to know people who do not know Jesus and then telling them about Jesus. You do not love people simply to tell them about Jesus. You love people, and one part of loving them is telling them about Jesus. It’s loving because it’s good to know Jesus. Continue reading “Loving God the Most: Making Jesus’ Priorities Ours”

Posted on

Loving God the Most: Making God the Baseline of Our Lives

There is no question that our greatest obligation as human beings is to love God above everything else. Jesus could not have been clearer: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment” (Mt. 22:37–38). This is what life is all about.

The statement is not controversial. If someone asked us, “What is the most important commandment?” Many of us would know the answer. Love the Lord your God. Yet, how many of us have really put effort into loving God more?

The season of Lent is an invitation to consider whether we are pursuing the love of God as our greatest objective. It is an opportunity to consider what our hearts go after in place of God. It is an occasion for reflection on the idols of our hearts that impede the love of God.

There is not question that humans are often unwilling to pursue God. However, sometimes we don’t love God because we are not sure what that even means. Loving a human being means wanting to be with them, get to know them, and help them thrive. But because God is not physically with us, it can be hard to understand what this looks like.

What does loving God really look like? Let me suggest three ways:

  1. Making God our chief source of comfort, love, security, and meaning.
  2. Spending time with God and learning to walk with Him moment by moment.
  3. Taking an interest in the interests of God.

Here I want to focus on # 2: learning to live in God’s presence. It is there that we learn to rely on Him as our chief source of comfort, love, security, and meaning. It is there that we learn about His interests so they can become our interests. It is there we find pleasures at His right hand forevermore (Psalm 16:11).

But what does this really look like? Obviously, we cannot literally think about God all the time, or we would not be able to do anything else because we can only think of one thing at a time. Continue reading “Loving God the Most: Making God the Baseline of Our Lives”

Posted on

Anxiety, Pride, and Relationships, Part 4: How God Redeems Relationships

Genesis 16 presents us with a family mess. It starts with anxiety, leads into pride, and ends in injustice. By verse 6, the family seems at the breaking point. Abraham abandons Hagar. Sarah treats Hagar harshly. Hagar runs away with Abraham’s child in her womb. The family now consists of a separted but complicated web of relationships. Can things turn around? If so, how?

God Meets Hagar
The answer? God shows up. But He showed up in an unlikely way. If we were to ask at the beginning of the story, “to whom would God appear to get them to turn things around?”, who would it be? Probably Abraham. Maybe Sarah. But here’s the surprise of the story. God showed up for the first time in the story, and He talked to . . . Hagar.

God asked Hagar, “Hagar, servant of Sarai, where have you come from and where are you going?” Let’s not miss the importance of this. As we noted in my past articles on this past (read part 1 on anxiety here, part 2 on pride here, and part 3 on injustice here), the anxiety of a slave is over the fact that they are unseen. Hagar seemed to be seen by Abraham, but then Abraham abandoned her to unjust abuse by Sarah. It seemed like she was unseen again. The Angel of the Lord, whom I believe is Jesus in a pre-incarnate form, the 2nd person of the Trinity, met her by the well and took an interest in her like He would in an unlikely woman at a wall a thousand plus years later (see John 4).

Hagar was honest with the angel. She said that she was running from her mistress Sarah.

Then, the angel of the Lord gave her a command, “Return to your mistress and submit to her” (Gen. 16:9).

By the end of the story, Hagar was encouraged and willing to go back.

What Motivates Hagar to Return
Why encouraged Hagar to go back to a tough situation? Continue reading “Anxiety, Pride, and Relationships, Part 4: How God Redeems Relationships”

Proudly powered by WordPress