Become a Disciple of Love

Lately I have felt myself drawn back to a particular moment during last summer's pilgrimage to Poland. It was a moment of awareness about my life that came mid-way into the journey. I suddenly became aware that I had been wasting a lot of energy in my spiritual life. I had been trying hard, pushing, being austere, getting tough, setting my bar high, and talking up this spiritual lifestyle to my kids. And it was all me. Lots of empty froth. It was "of the flesh."

I was praying in a 1000 year old church when the realization congealed within me. I saw that I had gotten stooped over, spiritually, in my efforts towards austerity, and in stooping I had lost clear vision of God's incredible love which beckons me outward, to Him and to others. My efforts left me pulled into myself. In that ancient church, in that foreign land where I had nothing else to distract me but what was ahead of me that hour, I saw more clearly that the only true value is love, and that I was over-doing my effort.

Lately, also, I have remembered a time 25 years ago when the Lord began to teach me from these simple words, in the context of learning to be led by the Spirit of God: "Using your own energies wears you down. Using my energy builds you up."

I lived a deeply passive lifestyle in my young adulthood, so it was a victory when I learned to assert effort. We do need to live with all of the strength of our heart, mind, and soul. However, it is just as important that we continually turn our natural strength over to God, and be willing to die to it, to take up His supernatural strength. To put it more clearly, we need to purposely soak ourselves in God's love daily, meditating on the reality that we are nothing -- zippidee doo da -- without His love. His love is the power of our lives. His love that becomes ours is to be our power. Love is the value.

To become a student of love, a practitioner of love, a disciple of love... this is the call of God I hear right now. Again. And always.