01/21/2023
Do I love the Lord like I did the moment I was saved? Has my love for Him diminished in any way over the years? This is my contemplation this morning. I am looking inward at the love I feel after many years with Jesus and worshiping God.
As the decades go by love matures. The flames may die down but the coals become hotter and glow red and white in their heat. God realizes this too, but like ourselves, He remembers that moment when the flames were new and the fire first kindled...
""Go and proclaim in the hearing of Jerusalem, Thus says the Lord, "I remember the devotion of your youth, your love as a bride, how you followed me in the wilderness, in a land not sown.”
Jeremiah 2:2 ESV
I remember the first years of my relationship and marriage; I recall the unquenchable desire to be with Ann and to touch her and kiss her with each breath I took. We have been married now for 46 years and although our love isn't like that any longer, it is every bit as intense. The years and experiences have brought us to a place of deep abiding love that is restful and without question.
John writes this of God's love:
“So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is so also are we in this world.”
1 John 4:16-17 ESV
My love for the Lord is such a love now... it is not the love of the betrothed, but the love of those who have spent years together through many challenges in life and tests of their faithfulness... a perfected love.
Fires change as the night grows old. Sure, they can be stoked back up from time to time, but their nature is to become coals that glow hot until the morning comes. Our only danger is in not having built them well enough... thus the coals are not sufficient to last and become only embers.
Our love for God is very much the same as our love for our spouse and the heat of a fire.
“Set me as a seal upon your heart, as a seal upon your arm, for love is strong as death, jealousy is fierce as the grave. Its flashes are flashes of fire, the very flame of the Lord. Many waters cannot quench love, neither can floods drown it. If a man offered for love all the wealth of his house, he would be utterly despised.”
The Song of Solomon 8:6-7 ESV
For some of us the question is... have I lost the fire? Has my love for God gone to embers or ash? Have I lost what I once knew?
Just by virtue of your asking yourself that question, I would say that there is still a glow in your embers, or that you don't understand the true nature of love and fire in the first place. If you find that your relationship with God is failing and growing cold, then you need to stoke it once more... go to Him in fervent prayer, listen for His voice in the night, seek Him in pilgrimage, and don your wedding clothes once more. But, if you have mistaken the lack of a flame for the loss of love, then I would recommend that you reexamine your coals. Are they glowing hot without the bright excitement of flame and the constant popping and cracking of a young fire? Has your love become an abiding love that can see you through the years in comfort? If so, praise God in the warmth of it.
Our relationship and love of God doesn't typically change overnight. The flame doesn't flash up and go away as quickly as it came, but if our fire hasn't been well laid then that will most certainly be the result. Reading God's word, praying in the quiet of each day, and worshipping Him with all the energy of a new love, will ensure that when our love for Him matures with the years, it will burn deep and hot like a midnight fire... warming even the rocks and earth around it. We will remain warm in the arms of God listening to His every word and hearing the rush of His breath. We will hold His hand and feel peace in His embrace... forever.
Prayer:
Father, let my love for you withstand the night of my life in perfection. Let the coals of my love glow hot until your Son Jesus Christ comes for me, and brings me before your throne. Lord, let the love of my ages find peace and calm in the soft glow of a late night fire as I await you patiently. Help me Holy Father to keep my love's fire until the dawn when I feel your warmth upon my face and see the bright light of a new love with these eyes once again... young, as in past years, and blazing into the sky.
Rich Forbes