The Holy One calls to me this morning. Our friendship involves sharing my emotions and seeking His wisdom to navigate life here on earth. On some rare days, the Holy Spirit will share His grief, today is one of those days.
I hear Him say, "Shallow love is hard to bear". This makes for a deep sadness yet it gives me an opportunity to reaffirm my love and declare my complete dependency on Him.
The love relationship the Lord desires to share with all of us is a constant friendship, a constant companionship, a constant romance yet because He is Spirit we can sometimes forget, ignore, or otherwise get distracted and allow distance and emotional separation to come between us. Just as a side note on "love" defined is the understanding that love is and always has been a choice and decision. Conditional love is just that: a decision based on self-serving conditions. Unconditional love on the other had makes no conditions for it's decision.
What the disciples enjoyed in their flesh relationship with Jesus, we, through the Holy Spirit and in a mysterious and "super-natural" way, can enjoy His presence in a much more "intimate" way. In flesh, Jesus was constrained to a physical body. As He was limited by geography, He was therefore limited in His ability to touch hearts and minds of people not present with Him while in the body of His flesh.
Before Jesus, Abraham and Moses knew God in a personal spiritual way, but again their relationship was external and while it served God's purpose to reveal Himself as the One True Sovereign God to the Nation of Israel, the people did not experience the God-intimacy that we can and do through the indwelling Holy Spirit of our Lord.
Try explaining in human terms the indwelling Presence of God and there is just no way for words to describe it. We can see the evidence of Him within a person's life but the mystery of that unity is beyond explanation. Here is where it becomes a matter of the heart and where we can and must nurture that love relationship with the Lord.
The whole of scripture is about God reaching out to His Beloved creation, humanity. The Old Testament is the picture of His love through a nation, Israel. The New Testament is a picture of His love for us through a person and not just any person. That person who came to show us the Love of God is none other than His only begotten son, Jesus the Christ.
But then, as the ultimate love story reaches its climax, God brings us into complete personal intimate unity through His indwelling Spirit. God pursues, God reveals Himself and God awaits for us to accept His proposal. There is no greater love and no greater romance than the one we have available with the One who created us for Himself.
As I ponder His words about "shallow love" I see how in life today, busyness and work, even good work, can separate us from Him and what may be His idea of our love relationship. In the human arena we all have ideas, expectations, and even requirements in our love relationships with each other. So many "love" relationships end up in a ditch for failure to meet the expectations of the other person.
While we do not consider that our love relationship with God can end up in a ditch, it can be put on a shelf. We can leave Him for other loves and return to look for Him on that shelf only when other lovers disappoint us, whether that other "lover" be a person or persons, a "mistress" business or a "siren" chemical that numbs the rejected heart.
As He speaks to me about shallow love, I understand He is calling me to a deeper one. His goal is not to shame me but to open my eyes to a perspective outside my own self- centeredness. To further my understanding, He takes me to Numbers 11. This is a part of the wilderness journey the children of Israel made on their way to the promised land. It holds some important symbolic elements for me to ponder today.
Moses was in the lead of 600,000 men (not counting women and children). They left Egypt with nothing they could not carry. They were taken through the Red Sea and ended up in a wilderness and with few supplies to sustain them.
They were living on a daily ration of "manna" that the Lord had supernaturally and graciously supplied but the people were bitter and complaining all the way. They seemed to have no appreciation for the most outrageous blessing a human could ever experience: God was with them!
His Holy Presence was in the midst of their community and was visually seen by them
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In Ex 40:34 it is written:
"Then a cloud covered the tent of meeting and the Gory of the Lord filled the tabernacle". . And vs 36 says, "In all the travels of the Israelites, whenever the cloud lifted from above the tabernacle, they would set out but if the cloud did not lift they did not set out until the day it lifted. So the cloud of the Lord was over the tabernacle by day and fire was in the cloud by night in the sight of the House of Israel during all their travels."
What a powerful image and picture of God's Presence, and yet they grumbled and complained. They focused on their immediate displeasure rather than on the future Promised Land. They did not consider the Presence of God among them nor appreciate the love of God for them as the most valuable and promising aspect of their lives.
Their love of the Lord was shallow based on what He provided to meet their physical and temporal needs at the moment. The testing of their faith was really an indictment of their love, and it was shallow.
Reading this account of their relational failure causes me to think about how my attitude reflects my love for the Lord. As an indwelling Presence, the Holy Spirit of Christ governs my life and provides endless opportunities to grow and then show Him how much I care. Deeper love finds it's pleasure in Who He is not just in what He does for me.
There will always be temporal discomfort and even things I must wait for Him to provide or resolve, but those things must never be allowed to define my love for Him. Today I can rejoice in His Presence and delight in His love not dependent on circumstances to be the reason. I truly "get" His point today and how "shallow love is hard to bear"
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The Spirit is calling. Can you hear Him?
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