WHEN Love leadS

​In my last post, I shared that God does not see us as His projects but as His beloved. This raised lots of questions: What about obedience? What about putting off the old self? What about sanctification?
I was reminded of these the other day when I read a familiar proverb that dates back to the 1500s:  “Don’t get the cart before the horse.” In those days, horses were precious and not always easy to come by. It made no sense to prepare your cart if you hadn’t yet secured the horse.
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This, I think, is what we often do when we approach spiritual growth. The cart represents all the things we know God is calling us to do. Obedience and service are valuable, but if we begin there, or even put these things in the forefront of our hearts and mind, we will never get where we want to go. The trying feels tedious and discouragement sets in at our lack of progress. 

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When God spoke to me that I was not his project and I asked him what I was, he answered simply: You are my beloved. The horse that draws the cart of Christian growth and service is God’s love.  God is always the initiator—we love because he first loved us. Thus, the older I get, the more I understand that everything hinges on my experience of God tenderly caring for my soul with the love that Scripture describes as beyond our understanding (Ephesians 3).
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When I was 19 years old my life was forever changed by an aunt who challenged me to fall in love with Jesus. I have loved him for over six decades now and my adoration grows daily. But what I didn’t grasp until much later was that Jesus is in love with me...that his love is so beautifully powerful that it can fuel every act of obedience, every putting off my old self, every work I might do in his name.
What does this look like practically? Mother Teresa, in one of her final letters to the Sisters of Charity wrote:

I have come to the place in my life where I cannot go a day without experiencing God’s love for me. In the quiet stillness of prayer, I wait. Sometimes I take Scripture at face value and receive His love by faith. More often, I simply rest until the Spirit whispers His love — and I am undone. May you know the tender blessedness of being loved by God today.
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