I received these thoughts the other day in an email from a friend that is serving in Ireland. I wanted to share them with you as I thought they were well worth repeating.
A great deal of my time over the past few years has been spent in pursuit of knowing more deeply the love of God. Recently my quest has taken me to a fascinating and challenging book entitled Falling for God: Saying Yes to His Extravagant Proposal by Gary Moon. The author states that “While our journey begins with salvation, we will fall deeply in love with God as we get to know him through taking the time for conversation, becoming honest enough for true communion, and ultimately, trusting his desire for consummation and surrendering to it.”
Musings on conversations between lovers
When [my wife] and I first fell in love we spent untold hours together just talking. It was the way to discover and identify with each other’s hearts—an absolute requirement to genuinely love each other. Our talks could not be interrupted, were give and take (not one-sided), and did not consist of one of us constantly asking the other for something.
How could we truly know the love of God without conversations of the same kind? We cannot. As we continue to examine our own lives and observe those of other missionaries on the field, one thing that seems to be lacking—perhaps in the lives of most of us—is uninterrupted and extended time to be alone with God. I suspect it is also true that most time spent with God probably does not sound like two lovers in conversation. Can you believe that makes God sad?
Prayer that consists of a one-way conversation of asking God for something and is often hurried does not lead to an experience of love. Most likely it results in an experience of elation when we get what we want and confusion, disappointment, or anger when we don’t get what we want. It makes me—the asker—not very interested in what is on the heart of the Father; rather I am just interested in what he can give me. And were I a Father whose only conversations with my son or daughter consisted of them asking for things, I would feel some grief over the fact that they did not really know me nor did they appear to want me to know them.
I have a strong sense that you and I need much more time for “love talks” with our Father. Could we carry each other to the Father to ask for that?
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