Archive for the 'Love' Category

I Long to Love Well

Friday, October 7th, 2011

I Long to Love Well

I awoke this morning with a deep longing to love well. It struck me that this is how I should awake every morning.

When Jesus was asked the purpose of life, He responded without hesitation: to love well (Matthew 22:35-40). The greatest commandment, in fact, the command that sums up all commands and identifies the purpose of life, is to love God well and to love others well.

I was also struck by the fact that I have a lot—a LOT—of growth to obtain in movement toward my goal of loving well. I love inconsistently, when I long to love consistently. I love conditionally, when I long to love unconditionally. I love based upon performance, when I long to love based upon Christ’s grace. I have a LOT of growing to do—through Christ.

I was further struck by the fact that I am so thankful to Christ that I long to love well. It’s not a natural longing—it’s supernatural. In myself, in the flesh, life is all about me. In Christ, through the Spirit, life is about sacrificial love.

Finally, I was struck by the realization that longing to love well is what separates the person with a new heart (the regenerate person) from the person with an old heart (the unsaved person). Apart from Christ we awake each morning longing to be loved well by others. We awake each morning longing for success, longing for ease, longing for happiness, longing just to survive. Apart from Christ, sometimes we awake longing for ill to happen to those who have caused us ill.

No one can awake longing to love well unless that longing has been awakened by Christ.

Join the Conversation

What did you awake longing for this morning? Tomorrow morning?

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Posted in Christ's Love, Christian Living, Love | 1 Comment »

How’s Your Spiritual Love Life? Part Three: Religious Affections

Monday, December 15th, 2008
How’s Your Spiritual Love Life?
Part Three: Religious Affections

Why do we do what we do? What motivates us? Why do we love God or fail to love God? The biblical answers to these questions might surprise you. Join us on a journey of spiritual discovery in our new blog series on How’s Your Spiritual Love Life?

We Are Motivated by Religious Affections

The Puritans called our spiritual longings “religious affections.” By “affections” they did not mean emotions, but something deeper. Emotions are reactive; affections are directive. As Jonathan Edwards explains: “Affections are the mainspring of human actions. The Author of human nature not only gave affections to man, but he made them the basis of human actions” (Edwards, Religious Affections, p. 9). Earlier he wrote:

The affections are the spring of men’s actions. All activity ceases unless he is moved by some affection—take away desire and the world would be motionless and dead—there would be no such thing as activity or any earnest pursuit whatsoever. Everywhere the Scriptures place much emphasis on the affections (Edwards, Religious Affections, p. xxviii).

The energy behind life is relational/spiritual. Relationships are fundamentally what move us. As John Owen describes:

Relational affections motivate the soul to cleave to and to seek relationships. The affections are in the soul as the helm is in the ship; if it be laid hold on by a skillful hand, he turneth the whole vessel which way he pleaseth (Owen, Temptation and Sin, p. ix).

Like God, as image bearers, we are persons-in-relationship. Spiritual relationships are the Holy of Holies of the soul because there truly is a God-shaped vacuum in the human soul.

We hunger for God while attempting to keep him far from our spiritual diet. When I worked on a psychiatric inpatient unit, I counseled a young man diagnosed as manic-depressive (what is now called bi-polar affective disorder). He experienced intense mood swings. At times he struggled with bouts of crippling depression, at other times he suffered from incapacitating elation. During one of his elevated periods, I asked him what would happen if he slowed down. “When I slow down, when my mind takes a break, then I languish alone in a bottomless, loveless pit.”

As we worked together, I encouraged him to invite God into the pit and onto the mountaintop. “Whatever you are experiencing,” I shared, “God is there and wants to experience it with you.”

In the ensuing days, weeks, months, and even years, he was able to face his spiritual dread. Though I believe that part of his struggle was physical, I believe that another part was spiritual. In his highs and lows, he escaped God, or at least tried to. All non-biological issues are relational issues, and ultimately spiritual ones. Blaise Pascal describes what occurs when we attempt to quench our spiritual thirst in non-God ways.

What is it, then, that this desire and this inability proclaim to us, but that there once was in man a true happiness of which there now remain to him only the mark and empty trace, which he in vain tries to fill from all his surroundings, seeking from things absent the help he does not obtain in things present? But these are all inadequate, because the infinite abyss can only be filled by an infinite and immutable object, that is to say, only by God Himself (Pascal, Pensées, VII, Paragraph 425).

So how’s your spiritual love life? Prayerfully ponder:

*What moves and motivates you to action?
*What desires impel and compel you?
*What are you earnestly pursuing and why?
*What is the energy behind your life?
*What fundamentally moves you?
*What is your soul cleaving to and seeking?
*Who or what is at the helm of your soul?
*What is in the Holy of Holies of your soul?
*What do you fill the God-shaped vacuum of your soul with?
*What do you fill your hungry soul with?
*What is your source of true happiness?
*What are you filling your infinite abyss with?

Posted in Affections, Biblical Counseling, Biblical Psychology, Longing for God, Longings, Love, Relationships, Religious Affections | No Comments »

How’s Your Spirtual Love Life, Part One: Great Lovers

Thursday, December 11th, 2008

How’s Your Spiritual Love Life?[i]
Part One: Great Lovers

Why do we do what we do? What motivates us? Why do we love God or fail to love God? The biblical answers to these questions might surprise you. Join us on a journey of spiritual discovery in our new blog series on How’s Your Spiritual Love Life?

Learn to Be a Great Lover

Often I’ve been tempted to market the counseling program I chair with the hook, Learn to be a great lover! but I’ve always had second thoughts. Too much possibility for misinterpretation. Frequently I’ve been tempted to start a first counseling session with the question, How’s your love life? I never have. Might be misinterpreted.

How’s your love life? Are you a great lover? Want to learn to be one? Keep reading.

Post-modern Christianity careens between the two extremes of fluffy, surface experientialism, and cold, aloof scholasticism. Biblical Christianity joins head and heart. We need a biblical theology that teaches us how to relate.

Changeless Truth for Changing Times

John Calvin, in his classic work, The Institutes of the Christian Religion, explains that love is fundamentally what moves us. “God begins his good work in us, therefore, by arousing love and desire and zeal for righteousness in our hearts; or, to speak more correctly, by bending, forming, and directing our hearts to righteousness.”

And Augustine, in his now famous quote, notes of God, “Thou movest us to delight in praising Thee; for Thou hast formed us for Thyself, and our hearts are restless until they find rest in Thee.”

Great Lovers Wanted

The Trinity marvelously fashioned us to reflect God, relate like God, representatively rule for God, and rest in God. God created us with the capacities to relate. He designed us to love Him with our entire being—worshipping Him as we enjoy and exalt Him. By creation, we are spiritual beings who worship, and, therefore, long to exalt, enjoy, and entrust ourselves to God.

So, how’s your love life? Could your relationship with God use some biblical truth and some resurrection power multipliers? Then come back tomorrow as we share relevant biblical principles for loving God passionately. Until then, prayerfully ponder:

*What do I value?
*What do I pursue?
*What do I treasure?


[i]Developed from materials originally published in: Kellemen, Bob. Soul Physicians: A Theology of Soul Care and Spiritual Direction. Winona Lake, IN: BMH Books, 2007.

Posted in Augustine, Backside of God, Calvin, Love, Love Life, Relationships, Soul Physicians | 1 Comment »