To practice abiding love by taking time to be with God through daily prayer, scripture reading (including lectio divina), reflection, and worship.
Key Verses: Deut. 6:4-5; Ps. 42:1-2; Matt. 6:33; Luke 6:12; 10:38-42; John 15; 1 John 3:18; Tim. 3:16-17; 1 John 4:13-17
It seems fitting the first practice should be focused on love. Jews have recited the Shema, from Deuteronomy 6, in their morning and evening prayer services, Jesus reaffirmed this when asked what the greatest commandment was (Matt 22:37-38).
Hear, O Israel: The LORD is our God, the LORD alone. You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.
We say, "Oh yes, of course, love is key," but is this our practice to love this way? Scripture tells us we should love God with all our heart, all our soul, all our strength, and all all mind. Do we love God like this? Do we really know how to love God like this?
In the letters to the churches in Revelation 2 and 3, the Ephesians are commended for all they do but one thing: "you abandoned the love you had at first." Paul tells the Corinthians:
If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing. (1 Cor 13:1-3)
Misty Edwards sings
Love, Love, Love
It's all abut love
As simple as it sounds,
its simple, yet profound.
So many never find it
Too busy running around.
in her song "See the Way" she sings
God is a lover, looking for a lover, so he fashioned me.
God is a lover, looking for a lover, so formed my heart.
The theme of God as the Divine Lover is found throughout the Bible. He is the lover, and we are the beloved. The command to love God with all our being is not a demand made by a tyrant, but rather, it is the message of our Creator, telling us we are made to love and be loved. Our response should be as the Psalmist:
As a deer longs for flowing streams,
so my soul longs for you, O God.
My soul thirsts for God,
for the living God.
When shall I come and behold
the face of God? Psalm 42:1 – 2
Yet, our lives are filled with business, worries, and cares which seem to push the Divine Lover out of our lives. Oh how the week seems to fly by! But God says:
But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Matthew 6:33
Now as they went on their way, he entered a certain village, where a woman named Martha welcomed him into her home. She had a sister named Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to what he was saying. But Martha was distracted by her many tasks; so she came to him and asked, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself? Tell her then to help me.” But the Lord answered her, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her.” Luke 10:38 – 42
Yes, we are to love God with all our being, but Jesus revealed a profound aspect of this love. He introduced us to the concept of abiding love (cf. John 15 and 17), where we have a mutually abiding relationship with God. Theology uses the Greek word perichoresis to explain the way the three persons of the Trinity abide together, and it is this concept of perichoresis that gives us a clue to how we are to love God. John explains it this way:
By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. And we have seen and do testify that the Father has sent his Son as the Savior of the world. God abides in those who confess that Jesus is the Son of God, and they abide in God. So we have known and believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them. Love has been perfected among us in this: that we may have boldness on the day of judgment, because as he is, so are we in this world. 1 John 4:13 – 17
Now that is intimacy -- to have the God of the universe dwelling in us and us in Him! This is the kind of love God desires for us.
Before I get to some of the aspects of this practice, I would like to make a brief qualification. Matthew 22:38-40 does not just talk about loving God. It talks about loving our neighbors, and elsewhere, Jesus goes further to define "neighbor" to include our enemies. Mixed up in the above verses on abiding love we also find verses about loving "one another." It is difficult to love God without loving others. It is my intent to cover the "one anothers" in a different practice, all its own. With this in mind, here are some ways to engage God and abiding love.
The key is to take time to be with God, just like you would take time to be with anyone you love intimately. I like Misty Edward's song, "What Only You Can Do." She sings:
I'll take my cold, cold heart.
I'll take my un-renewed mind.
I'll take your Word in my hand,
and I'll give you time to come and melt me...
Thus the practice of abiding love often starts with us reading and reflecting on scripture and prayer. Mariano Magrassi in his excellent book, Praying the Bible: An Introduction to Lectio Divina quotes an early Christian witness to the power of scripture to transform us and draw us near to God (cf. 2 Tim 3:16):
Reading enables us to learn what we do not know, meditation enables us to retain what we have learned, and prayer enables us to live what we have retained. Reading Sacred Scripture confers on us two gifts: it makes the soul's understanding keener, and after snatching us from the world's vanities, it leads us to the love of God." (p. 20)
In this practice I highlight four specific activities: scripture reading, prayer, reflection, and worship. Volumes have been written on these activities. I will only make the following observations here.
Regarding scripture reading.
- Read with a listening heart. Let the Holy Spirit speak to you, work on you, and draw you to the One who inspired the Word.
- Read whole books, so you get the context as well as the content.
- Read as much or as little at one time as the Spirit leads. Sometimes the Holy Spirit will have you to hovering over just one verse, and other times, you will go through a chapter or two.
- I suggest you read through the Psalms regularly, as the monastics traditionally have done.
- I also like to be working on an Old Testament and a New Testament book.
- I like to read one of the gospels regularly.
- Using the model of lectio divina, let God lead you into that place of abiding love through your reading.
Regarding prayer. There are many ways and types of prayer. Use them all! You can say prayers of confession, thanksgiving, petition, intercession, contemplation, and you can just have plain, honest, conversations with God. Again, following the model of lectio divina, allow prayer flow in response to what God speaks to you.
Regarding Reflection. Reflection touches on the idea of a listening heart. It can include meditation, as you ponder what you are reading and what the Holy Spirit is doing. It can be a general reflection, such as you do in a journal, as you process through what you what God is doing. Reflection can be taking the time to enjoy a moment of solitude or silence, or it can be taking the time to stop, and enjoy some aspect of creation. Ultimately -- again following the pattern of lectio divina -- reflection and prayer should lead to a resting in God, traditionally called contemplation.
Regarding Worship. I hardly feel qualified to write about worship. Perhaps the one who has taught me most about worship is Misty Edwards (you can find her albums on iTunes). There are perhaps as many ways and style of worshiping God as there are people. My theology professor says the study of theology should lead to worship. Here are some of my observations on worship.
- Worship is an act of devotion or worth-giving.
- Since we are to love with all our being, we should worship with all our being.
- Music helps me to worship. I am not very musically inclined, so I often use recorded music in my worship.
- Even though I am not very musically inclined, I find that when I play my guitar and sing that it adds a deeper dimension to my worship, if not to those hearing me (grin).
- I greatly enjoy the IHOP Prayer Room, which provides way of getting a wide variety of worship, both structured and spontaneous, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. They have been going like that for over ten years!
Finally, I need to say a few words about frequency. If you remember, I wanted simple, easy to remember, practices that also allowed for some assessment of my personal walk with the Lord. After prayerful consideration, I chose to use the term "daily" in this practice, resisting the temptation to be more precise. A general guideline of "daily" seemed reasonable. While one could spend as little a five minutes a day, my thinking is that if we do all four of these things, daily, then it would naturally take a while. The duration will work itself out.
That said, I personally feel that if we find it hard to practice these things, then we might ask ourselves how much time we spend watching TV, movies, checking FaceBook, watching Youtube, playing or watching our favorite sports, or doing any other such activity. Perhaps we will find an opportunity to re-evaluate our priorities? I am mostly speaking to myself here, but I trust my readers will understand the point.
With this all in mind, I leave you to reflect on this prayer of Paul's for the Ephesians:For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth takes its name. I pray that, according to the riches of his glory, he may grant that you may be strengthened in your inner being with power through his Spirit, and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, as you are being rooted and grounded in love. I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen. Ephesians 3:14 – 21
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