Tri-tip, Laughs, and Love
I love tri-tip. Seriously. There may not be a greater cut of meat in all the butcher shop. Marinate it, sear it, cook until it is a beautiful medium-rare and your mouth will beg for more. Love it.I love a good stand-up comedian. Tough to find one who is both funny and family friendly, but when you can, it is beautiful. Anyone who can draw out one of those deep meaningful laughs from my belly is ok in my book. Love it.I love my family. I am so blessed by the wife and kids God has graced me with. Ok, gotta stop there. I used the same word to describe a piece of a dead animal, a stranger, and my flesh and blood. Something is wrong with love. Not the reality of love, the way we use the word. The first two examples are all about my satisfaction. The third can be...but shouldn't be. Yet so often we speak of love when we talk about the things which bring us happiness. Here's the problem. Love, real love, isn't about me at all. Love is about the object of that love. I don't love my wife when she makes me tri-tip while telling me a joke. I love her because she "is". I committed to loving her. I chose to love her. Even if she does nothing to bring me happiness...I love her. Do you wonder why our culture treats marriage as dispensable? It starts with this misunderstanding of love. This language becomes even more problematic when we talk about God.When Jesus is asked the most important commandment, he replies:"You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment."Matthew 22:37-38 ESVJesus never mentions a BBQ once.In order to love God the way Jesus describes, we must shift our perspective from what He gives, to who He is. I can be thankful for happy moments in my life (I should be), but I do not (should not) love God greater because of them. Love is not a feeling we have, but a posture and action we take. But how do we do walk this out?Though there are many scriptures which could help, let's sit for a while in Psalm 27. Would encourage you to read through the whole Psalm,won't take long. Done? Good, let's move on and focus on one key area:
One thing have I asked of the Lord, that will I seek after:that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life,to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to inquire in his temple.' Psalm 27:4 ESV
We love God when we "dwell". Imagine telling your spouse you love them and then following that up with an explanation of how you don't want to make time for them. Now imagine sleeping on a couch.To love God, we must give him adequate time. Even bigger, go back a few words: "One thing I have asked..." If David could have one thing, it was to dwell in the house and presence of the Lord. We could call this loving God with all our heart.We also love God when we "gaze". To look intently at the beauty of the Lord simply because he is beautiful is to gaze upon. To read His word because it reveals Him to us more deeply each time we open the cover. To meditate upon Him, the consider the way the gospel has changed us (and is changing us) is to love God with our soul. Tim Keller put this well, "In religion, you obey because God is useful. In Christianity, you obey because God is beautiful."Then these last words: "and to inquire in his temple."Love for the Lord goes beyond feeling to the mind. To earnestly seek God and his word for application in our lives. To look at the situation you are in and ask God how you should live in the midst of it. To consider how God's truth might apply in the decisions we make each day. David loves the Lord with all his mind.We are called to love God with our hearts, souls, and minds. We make decisions as a church and as individuals not for our happiness or satisfaction, but His. We do this believing that we will find no greater satisfaction in this world than to first love Him. After all, He not only gave us life, grace, and love but tri-tip too.