From Emotion to Devotion

This section seemed to rise up and jump right off the page to me. My poor book looks like a sea of underlines sentences and whole paragraphs! It’s like my little blue pen had a mind of its own!

Lysa begins by telling us about Whitney’s climb to the top of a 40-foot pole. I won’t retell the story, but congrats to Whitney for even attempting the climb. I would have been cowering behind something, to scared to watch someone else, much less tackle that height myself. In the last few feet, while attempting to reach the top, Whitney fell. Gasp! Now, not to worry, she was harnessed so she didn’t fall to her death, although, she might have felt that way the first few seconds of the fall! Just thinking of it gives me the woolies! But in that moment, before she fell, she caught a glimpse of what the view was like from the top. Later it caused her to reflect on her relationship with God. “Too many times she has stopped just shy of full-on devotion to the Lord. She realized she has little spiritual stamina, that the emotion that helped her start her journey with God would never be enough to finish. She would have to have a level of devotion she wasn’t sure she had.” (p. 174) I’ve felt that way.

Lysa ask the question, “Have you ever wanted more in your relationship with God but, for fear of failing, stopped just shy of full-on devotion?”(p. 175) YES! And as I read this I found myself realizing that I truly wanted more. I felt my heart stir.

Like Lysa, I wondered what was stopping me from that type of devotion. Lysa believes too many of us have never dared to believe the glorious possibility Jesus clearly offers when He says, “He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me: and he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him, and will manifest myself to him.”                John 14:21KJV

Lysa goes on to break down the verse, section by section, to help us see what glorious possibilities there are if we will love God with our whole hearts (pages 176-177). Again my pages are a sea of blue underlines! If your reading this blog, but don’t have the book, I encourage you to purchase it. It’s amazing.

So to boil down the explanation of the verse, “Rather Jesus is clearly explaining to us that if we love God, if we love Jesus, we will want to obey His commands. Doing so will no longer be our duty; it will be our desire. We’ll follow Him not to win His love or prove how good we are. But rather to live in His love and delight in how good He is.”

So many people fall into the trap of thinking of God as the “Big Fixer and Benevolent Giver.” I know, I’ve been there. I believe that’s why so many don’t have the relationship with God that God desires. We don’t “live in His love and delight in how good He is.” We need to move past just thinking of Him as our cure-all God and see Him as He really is. Our creator that loves and wants to spent time with us. I don’t want to be that little child that looks up to Dad and always wants something. I want to move passed that mindset to a place where just spending time with Him is enough.

I hope these blog entries have been a blessing to you. I enjoy writing them because they help me to clarify my thoughts as I consider each section of our book. Thank you to those who have posted comments. Your thoughts are a blessing and encouragement to me! I love them!