Falling in Love with God

The most important command, above all others, is to “love the Lord your God with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength” (Mark 12:30). Jesus says that all the commands and doctrines of Scripture can be summarized by this one concept (Matthew 22:40).

The old saying says, “You can’t see the forest for the trees.” Sometimes we get lost in all the details of Scripture that we miss the big picture. We can become so overly consumed with all the commands and doctrines of Scripture that we miss the real point. Too often we mistakenly think that right doctrine is the destination of our faith. It is not. The real destination is relationship with God. Sometimes detailed doctrine causes us to lose sight of the real goal of our faith—falling in love with God. That is not to say that doctrine and precise obedience are not essential. After all, you can’t even have a forest if there are no trees. The trees make up the forest. Likewise, individual doctrines are the small pixels that combine together to paint the beautiful portrait of true relationship with God. John put it best when he wrote, “…but whoever keeps his word, in him truly the love of God is perfected” (1 John 2:5). Being motivated by his intense love for God, Jesus was compelled to “do exactly as the Father commanded me” (John 14:31, NASB). His motivation was not command-keeping that resulted in love for God. It was his love for God that produced a loving, and exact obedience.

When Jesus says that the most important command is to love God with all that we are, he seems to be describing a life that has completely fallen in love with God. Well, what does it look like to be completely in love with God? To understand this question maybe we should reflect upon the times that we have experienced the overwhelming emotion of falling in love with someone.

Usually, the first thing that happens when you fall in love with someone is that your mind is completely consumed with that person. Constantly distracted, you cannot seem to focus your mind on other things. Your mind is filled with thoughts of the object of your love. You try and visualize your loved one and your mind constantly repeats the words your loved one last uttered.

Dallas Willard describes what being in love with God is really about. In his book The Great Omission he quotes Thomas Watson who writes, “…the first fruit of love is the musing of the mind upon God. He who is in love, his thoughts are ever upon the object” (100). The person who is truly “in love with God” will not compartmentalize their life of faith as separate from their secular dealings. A person who is in love allows their loved one to penetrate every aspect of their lives.

If you are in love with someone, you don’t have to remind yourself to think about them. Being in love means that you naturally can’t get the one you love off your mind. The face of your loved one is ever before your mind. That is what it means to really be in love with God.

The French monk Brother Lawrence called attention to the fact that one must “practice the presence of God.” In order to “fall in love with God” he suggested that one must discipline himself/herself to constantly have an awareness of God’s presence. Similar to the lyrics of the favorite Christian hymn, “Be with Me Lord”, we must strive for a “constant sense of thy abiding presence.”

This is the very principle that David, a man after God’s own heart, had come to realize. He wrote in Psalm 16:8, “I have set the LORD always before me; because he is at my right hand, I shall not be shaken.” David is essentially saying that he had learned to make it a constant practice in his life to “set the LORD” before his mind. David’s mind was consumed with a constant sense of God’s presence. He had fallen in love with his God. Have you?

(Originally published July 12, 2009)