01/21/2025
This morning Let’s ask ourselves a couple of questions… “Do I love the Lord like I did the moment I was saved?”, and “Has my love for Him diminished in any way over the years?” This will be our contemplation this morning. I am personally looking inward at the love I feel after many years with Jesus and worshiping God. Will you join me in this?
As the decades go by our 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 us, He remembers that moment when the flames of our faith were new and the fire was 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 to my wife; 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 47 years and although the newness of 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 this kind of 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... it is a more 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 will not last the night 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 find peace in His embrace... forever… eternally.
Prayer:
Father, thank you for your abiding love and keeping me warm in it. Father, let my love for you withstand the night of my life as you perfect it measure by measure. 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 aged eyes once again... young, as in past years, and blazing into the sky. Holy, Holy, Holy, are you my God who loves me for all eternity. Holy are you who sees me perfected in love for you, and without the wrinkles and crippled gate of the aged.
““Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.””
Deuteronomy 6:4-5 ESV
“And he [Jesus] said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment.””
Matthew 22:37-38 ESV
“so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.”
Ephesians 3:17-19 ESV
“And the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush. He looked, and behold, the bush was burning, yet it was not consumed. And Moses said, “I will turn aside to see this great sight, why the bush is not burned.” When the Lord saw that he turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush, “Moses, Moses!” And he said, “Here I am.” Then he said, “Do not come near; take your sandals off your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.”
Exodus 3:2-5 ESV
Rich Forbes