Several years ago, a friend who had just gone through a bitter divorce proceeding, remarked to me that she taken away one life-changing lesson from her ordeal. “I will never love a man more than I love God again”. I remember being stunned, it was food for thought. I was quite young at that time and had never heard the love for God declared that way. The only way I could relate to her words was because the intricacies of relocating had caused me to spend an extended amount of time without my own young family. Crying for my young kids almost every night had caused me to turn to God to ease my pain.
As I grow in faith, the meaning of ‘Love the Lord your God, with all your heart, and all your soul and all your might’ takes on a deeper meaning and I have always taken my friend’s comment as a starting point when talking about it. How many spouses have learnt this bitter lesson, years into their marriage? Never mind that scripture warns that it is only God that never disappoints. Our parents, children and loved ones can and will all fail us to different degrees. In fact, some of them only love us conditionally, only if certain things are in place.
Love with all your heart…..Hmn….Let’s say one loves God with all one’s heart, can one really love a spouse or a child with all their heart as well? Of course, I know that spiritual love is different from eros and filial love. But still, should one love any creation of God, or any blessing God has gifted us with all their heart? Shouldn’t that phrase “love you with all my heart” be reserved exclusively for God? Should you still love someone God brought into your life one hundred percent? Should you not hold a fraction of the possible whole filial love you can have for that person back, and yield that bit to God? You know, a very slight sense of detachment? That way, God has His own 100 percent and a little bit out of the love you have for every person He has given you, a way of acknowledging His Lordship over that relationship. This is a question way above my pay grade, and I look forward to learning more about it.
This much I know. After I heard that statement, I began to emphasize to my kids that although I loved them more than life, I loved God more than I loved them and I also expect them to love God more than they love me. This has been a difficult message to pass on to children, but they are now young adults and I hope and pray that as they grow in their relationship with God, the Holy Spirit will bring them to a fuller revelation of what it means to love God above and beyond; to love God with all their heart and soul and strength. No gift from God should ever be loved on the same level as God.
Deut 6:4-9. 4Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD: 5And you shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might. 6And these words, which I command you this day, shall be in your heart: 7And you shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise up. 8And you shall bind them for a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. 9And you shall write them on the posts of your house, and on your gates.
Hilltop Thoughts, Valley Strengths 