Wholehearted Love
Wholehearted love for God fuels true obedience. There is no other sustainable way to follow Jesus in the way of the kingdom. True obedience follows wholehearted love:
Psalms 119:2-5 Blessed are those who keep His testimonies, Who seek Him with the whole heart! They also do no iniquity; They walk in His ways. You have commanded us To keep Your precepts diligently. Oh, that my ways were directed To keep Your statutes!
Legalism gets this very concept backwards, "working our way" into obedience to prove our love, rather than loving our way into obedience. It takes God to love God, as AW Tozer famously expressed it. It takes God to obey God, too!
It is easy to try to control the external areas of our lives...what we eat, what we drink, what we watch, and where we go...in order to change the internal. But, if I want wholehearted love to burn in me, there is only one way... I need to change the internal...stoke the fire... to get the external parts of my life to line up in a sustainable way!
Before I learned about “wholeheartedness” I always thought loving God with my whole heart meant having more discipline to do “Christian” things, and more discipline to not do “non-Christian” things. I was WAY wrong. I had the whole idea exactly backwards. I thought that doing, or not doing, certain things I associated with “good Christians”, things like reading my Bible more, or praying more, or serving more, would make my heart closer to God. The truth is, getting your heart closer to God will make you do those things more! Look at the two approaches like a math problem:
Me + Bible Reading + Praying + Serving = More God
Or
Me + More God = Bible Reading + Praying + Serving
There is a HUGE difference between the two equations. The first one looks really Christian but is really hard to keep going for very long. Maintaining this is hard because without a close relationship with God, the reading, praying, and serving can get really boring, quick. If you have ever decided “I am going to read my Bible every day from now on” you probably know what I am talking about. However, getting close to God's love will produce a fire inside that is fascinating. This will actually make you naturally start to want more.
This is a fine line, but a very important one. Working your way into holiness to prove your love is one of the major errors of the Pharisees. They did the work...in fact, they did a lot of extra work... but missed the love, and ultimately missed the Messiah:
John 5:39-40 You search the Scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life; and these are they which testify of Me. But you are not willing to come to Me that you may have life.
The reason it takes God to love God is related to the truth of love: God is the author of love. There isn't one drop of true love in the universe that God didn't author into existence. Love is a fruit of the presence of God. We could not love except with the love we have received from God!
I John 4:19-21 We love Him because He first loved us. If someone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he has not seen? And this commandment we have from Him: that he who loves God must love his brother also.
Here, John gives us the ultimate test of whether or not we are running on self-generated emotion, or true love: does it overflow to those around us? This is the first and second commandment, in the correct order...love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength...which, if it is really happening will overflow into loving your neighbor as yourself...that is obedience...that is consecration!
When this divine flow begins happening, it naturally produces "consecration"...you begin living differently. God is a consuming fire. His love will NATURALLY begin consuming lesser pleasures in your life. This causes you to be less interested in the things that would hinder your experience of love. This is how the things of the world truly grow "strangely dim."
From the outside, it appears that you are very disciplined, but in the true operation of Holy consecration you aren't disciplined, you are lovesick. This is way different than disciplined. Lovesickness makes God the author of love. It will produce obedience as a result.
John 14:15 “If you love Me, keep My commandments.
It is easy to get this verse backward, which would be to believe it is saying that if I obey Jesus it proves I really love Him. No one can self-generate love, which makes this concept unsustainable in a real way. You might be able to fool people, but you can't fool God. When we burn out trying to sustain this lie, we easily get ensnared in condemnation. We have to overcome this lie.
What Jesus is saying is that if you truly love Him...which is to direct your desire to Him to receive love from Him, you will naturally obey Him more completely...more perfectly. Discipline is important, but it is a discipline of our DESIRE that improves our behavior. "Jesus, I WANT to love you more...please help me!"
This makes God the center of obedience, rather than making ourselves the authors of love.
Wholehearted love for Jesus...when you begin flowing in it... is really receiving more love from Him...not a heroic act of superhuman love flowing from you. This is a really important distinction to make. To not recognize this will actually shut off the flow of love. We are not capable of producing love, only in receiving and sharing it. This is the same with all the fruit of the Spirit. There is only one who produces "good". Here, Jesus says failing to recognize this truth...failing to let God's goodness lead you into obedience... will actually prevent you from entering the kingdom:
Matthew 19:17 So He said to him, “Why do you call Me good? No one is good but One, that is, God. But if you want to enter into life, keep the commandments.”
Once you have tasted wholehearted love, or been around others who are on fire with wholehearted love, it is easy to fall into trying to "keep up" in consecration or obedience. This will burn you out. What produces wholehearted love naturally is "abiding"...staying in the conversation with Jesus.
Staying in lots of conversations ABOUT Jesus is WAY different than staying in a conversation WITH Jesus. Knowing God is the whole point of why God made man. Nothing else will work in the long term.
"Jesus, help me to love you."
"Jesus, increase my ability to feel your love and believe it"
"Jesus, tell me how you see me"
"Jesus, teach me to hunger and thirst for obedience, rather than strive to obey"
These are the three second conversations that will draw you into radical consecration, if you will actually keep having them, I recommend out loud, until you see the wholehearted love begin to burn in your heart. This really does work IF you will actually do it. Thinking something is not the same as saying it. If you will actually say these things to Jesus, I guarantee He will begin to produce them. I say it out loud, because I don't want to slip into thinking them instead of engaging Jesus in a conversation. Jesus respects the internal boundary lines of your desire. He let's you think stuff without saying it. He will not violate the boundaries of your heart.
We can start talking our way into more of God now. We will grow in love for God for an eternity, but we can enter in to the experience now. Giving Him more today than yesterday is how it starts, but it has to begin with asking, seeking and knocking. There is no other way to receive the riches of the kingdom:
Matthew 18:3 and said, “Assuredly, I say to you, unless you are converted and become as little children, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven.
Children don't understand the cost of what they want. They don't entertain the idea they can earn it. They simply go to the one who can give it to them and ask. They ask UNTIL they receive, if they REALLY want something.
Wholehearted love, and the consecration it produces, are two of the most valuable substances on earth. You can't earn them. They are valuable beyond our wildest imagination. You can only humble yourself, see the immense cost, and ask, seek, and knock for them. But if you do, more and more obedience will follow...then you will show yourself as a true son or daughter of the King!
Matthew 7:7-11 “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened. Or what man is there among you who, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will he give him a serpent? If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask Him!
Psalms 119:2-5 Blessed are those who keep His testimonies, Who seek Him with the whole heart! They also do no iniquity; They walk in His ways. You have commanded us To keep Your precepts diligently. Oh, that my ways were directed To keep Your statutes!
Legalism gets this very concept backwards, "working our way" into obedience to prove our love, rather than loving our way into obedience. It takes God to love God, as AW Tozer famously expressed it. It takes God to obey God, too!
It is easy to try to control the external areas of our lives...what we eat, what we drink, what we watch, and where we go...in order to change the internal. But, if I want wholehearted love to burn in me, there is only one way... I need to change the internal...stoke the fire... to get the external parts of my life to line up in a sustainable way!
Before I learned about “wholeheartedness” I always thought loving God with my whole heart meant having more discipline to do “Christian” things, and more discipline to not do “non-Christian” things. I was WAY wrong. I had the whole idea exactly backwards. I thought that doing, or not doing, certain things I associated with “good Christians”, things like reading my Bible more, or praying more, or serving more, would make my heart closer to God. The truth is, getting your heart closer to God will make you do those things more! Look at the two approaches like a math problem:
Me + Bible Reading + Praying + Serving = More God
Or
Me + More God = Bible Reading + Praying + Serving
There is a HUGE difference between the two equations. The first one looks really Christian but is really hard to keep going for very long. Maintaining this is hard because without a close relationship with God, the reading, praying, and serving can get really boring, quick. If you have ever decided “I am going to read my Bible every day from now on” you probably know what I am talking about. However, getting close to God's love will produce a fire inside that is fascinating. This will actually make you naturally start to want more.
This is a fine line, but a very important one. Working your way into holiness to prove your love is one of the major errors of the Pharisees. They did the work...in fact, they did a lot of extra work... but missed the love, and ultimately missed the Messiah:
John 5:39-40 You search the Scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life; and these are they which testify of Me. But you are not willing to come to Me that you may have life.
The reason it takes God to love God is related to the truth of love: God is the author of love. There isn't one drop of true love in the universe that God didn't author into existence. Love is a fruit of the presence of God. We could not love except with the love we have received from God!
I John 4:19-21 We love Him because He first loved us. If someone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he has not seen? And this commandment we have from Him: that he who loves God must love his brother also.
Here, John gives us the ultimate test of whether or not we are running on self-generated emotion, or true love: does it overflow to those around us? This is the first and second commandment, in the correct order...love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength...which, if it is really happening will overflow into loving your neighbor as yourself...that is obedience...that is consecration!
When this divine flow begins happening, it naturally produces "consecration"...you begin living differently. God is a consuming fire. His love will NATURALLY begin consuming lesser pleasures in your life. This causes you to be less interested in the things that would hinder your experience of love. This is how the things of the world truly grow "strangely dim."
From the outside, it appears that you are very disciplined, but in the true operation of Holy consecration you aren't disciplined, you are lovesick. This is way different than disciplined. Lovesickness makes God the author of love. It will produce obedience as a result.
John 14:15 “If you love Me, keep My commandments.
It is easy to get this verse backward, which would be to believe it is saying that if I obey Jesus it proves I really love Him. No one can self-generate love, which makes this concept unsustainable in a real way. You might be able to fool people, but you can't fool God. When we burn out trying to sustain this lie, we easily get ensnared in condemnation. We have to overcome this lie.
What Jesus is saying is that if you truly love Him...which is to direct your desire to Him to receive love from Him, you will naturally obey Him more completely...more perfectly. Discipline is important, but it is a discipline of our DESIRE that improves our behavior. "Jesus, I WANT to love you more...please help me!"
This makes God the center of obedience, rather than making ourselves the authors of love.
Wholehearted love for Jesus...when you begin flowing in it... is really receiving more love from Him...not a heroic act of superhuman love flowing from you. This is a really important distinction to make. To not recognize this will actually shut off the flow of love. We are not capable of producing love, only in receiving and sharing it. This is the same with all the fruit of the Spirit. There is only one who produces "good". Here, Jesus says failing to recognize this truth...failing to let God's goodness lead you into obedience... will actually prevent you from entering the kingdom:
Matthew 19:17 So He said to him, “Why do you call Me good? No one is good but One, that is, God. But if you want to enter into life, keep the commandments.”
Once you have tasted wholehearted love, or been around others who are on fire with wholehearted love, it is easy to fall into trying to "keep up" in consecration or obedience. This will burn you out. What produces wholehearted love naturally is "abiding"...staying in the conversation with Jesus.
Staying in lots of conversations ABOUT Jesus is WAY different than staying in a conversation WITH Jesus. Knowing God is the whole point of why God made man. Nothing else will work in the long term.
"Jesus, help me to love you."
"Jesus, increase my ability to feel your love and believe it"
"Jesus, tell me how you see me"
"Jesus, teach me to hunger and thirst for obedience, rather than strive to obey"
These are the three second conversations that will draw you into radical consecration, if you will actually keep having them, I recommend out loud, until you see the wholehearted love begin to burn in your heart. This really does work IF you will actually do it. Thinking something is not the same as saying it. If you will actually say these things to Jesus, I guarantee He will begin to produce them. I say it out loud, because I don't want to slip into thinking them instead of engaging Jesus in a conversation. Jesus respects the internal boundary lines of your desire. He let's you think stuff without saying it. He will not violate the boundaries of your heart.
We can start talking our way into more of God now. We will grow in love for God for an eternity, but we can enter in to the experience now. Giving Him more today than yesterday is how it starts, but it has to begin with asking, seeking and knocking. There is no other way to receive the riches of the kingdom:
Matthew 18:3 and said, “Assuredly, I say to you, unless you are converted and become as little children, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven.
Children don't understand the cost of what they want. They don't entertain the idea they can earn it. They simply go to the one who can give it to them and ask. They ask UNTIL they receive, if they REALLY want something.
Wholehearted love, and the consecration it produces, are two of the most valuable substances on earth. You can't earn them. They are valuable beyond our wildest imagination. You can only humble yourself, see the immense cost, and ask, seek, and knock for them. But if you do, more and more obedience will follow...then you will show yourself as a true son or daughter of the King!
Matthew 7:7-11 “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened. Or what man is there among you who, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will he give him a serpent? If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask Him!
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