Becoming a Healthy Soul

“In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.” ~1 John 4:10

What does a healthy relationship with God look and feel like? How do we grow towards that? As a pastor, I think about those questions constantly. How would you answer them? Take a moment and think about that. Put your thoughts down on paper. Clarify your thinking. What would a better relationship with God look like in your life? Be specific.

One of the ways to answer that question revolves around the question of love. If God is love – and He is – am I growing in my capacity to love God and other people? Such a life cannot be forced. Please don’t misunderstand this devotional as a thinly-veiled attempt to guilt you into loving God more. Our love for God is never sui generis (self-generated). It always flows as a responsive echo of God’s own love for us.

When it comes to assessing my own spiritual growth, I find this to be the best place to start. Am I experiencing more of God’s love for my lost and ruined soul? Am I enthralled by the fact that, “Beyond all human faith, beyond all earthbound hope, the eternal God of love has reached down to me and, in the ultimate act of sacrifice, purchased me and made me His own” (Kenneth Boa)?

Too often, I must confess, my experience is more akin to the Elizabethan poet George Herbert (1593-1633), who described the stinging sense of unworthiness sinners feel of such love:

Love bade me welcome. Yet my soul drew back
                        Guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack
                            From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning,
                            If I lacked any thing.

A guest, I answered, worthy to be here:
                            Love said, You shall be he.
I, the unkind, ungrateful? Ah my dear,
                            I cannot look on thee.
Love took my hand, and smiling did reply,
                            Who made the eyes but I?

Truth Lord, but I have marred them: let my shame
                            Go where it doth deserve.
And know you not, says Love, who bore the blame?
                            My dear, then I will serve.
You must sit down, says Love, and taste my meat:
                            So I did sit and eat.

These lines have been my companion this week. They expose me. I keenly feel my own unworthiness to be loved by God. Are my eyes worthy of seeing God? Never! Yet, Hebert reminds, it was God who gave me these eyes for seeing, and with them shall I not see Him one day? Knowing this, though, shame still prefers to hide and “go where it doth deserve”– away from God! But, Love counters, “Know you not who bore the blame?” Like Herbert, my first response to such grace is, “Okay, I’ll come, but let me at least do something ('serve') to save me from the shame of coming with nothing in my hands to bring. I’ll come, but let me not come as a penniless pauper.” “No,” saith Love in response, “Your role here is not to do, but to taste: Sit and eat!”

This is where our desire to do something so often short-circuits spiritual growth. When it comes to experiencing the love of Christ, ours is not to strive; ours is simply to taste. There is naught to do,  for He hath done it all.