Onions, pictures of my friends, hay, old pickup trucks, grass, kisses from a child, squirrels, life and why not, let’s throw you into the list, too. What do all of these things have in common? Each one of them (along a few equally disconnected items that I omitted) is something that Tom T. Hall lists in the song “I Love” as things he loves. That’s a pretty wide grouping of things for one person to love if you ask me. And I love that song. I’ve loved that song since I was little. Or at least I’ve liked it a whole lot.
We love lots of things. We love “Hey Jude”, and we love Elvis, and we love Grandma, and we love Christmas when we’re little…lots of great things that we love. And at the same time – we love Taco Bell, and we love Weekend at Bernie’s, and we love sleeping late on Saturday, and we love buying gas for 15 cents cheaper than we would have yesterday. We love our new phone, and we love our parents. We love fresh, hot pizza, and at the same time we love our wife and kids. Do we really love our phone the same way we love our kids? I mean, we say we love them both.
Now comes the hard part of the quiz – and those of you that just googled Tom T. Hall thought THAT was hard part, right? But which end of the spectrum do we put our love of Jesus? Deuteronomy 6:5 – and repeated by Jesus in Matthew 22:37, and Luke 10:27 as the Greatest Commandment – says we’re to Love the Lord your God with all of your Heart, Soul, Strength, and Mind. There have been volumes written on the different variations of “love” used in the Greek language. When Jesus reaffirms Peter, “Peter do you agape (all encompassing love) me?” “Lord, you know I phileo (brotherly love) you” is that stylistic by the writer or indicative of some deeper meaning that Peter is unwilling to commit to an all-encompassing love? I don’t know. I wasn’t there – but I’ll ask when I get to Heaven. But it’s certainly something applicable to our word love. Certainly we don’t love the new song on the radio as much as we love our new-born baby. But we use the same word, and which is really closer to our love of Jesus? Words are tricky though. So let’s look at the heart. Because that’s what God looks at.
When we look at the heart and ask “Do I love Jesus as much as I love the Beatles”, the answer might well be a resounding “Sometimes!” No, I mean a resounding “Yes!” Well, sometimes I mean a resounding “Yes!” Moses told the Children of Israel to “Love the Lord your God, and walk in his ways.” But some days, things are hard. Some days we’re frustrated and our “Love the Lord your God” is a rheostat. Rheostats are used in the knob-style dimmer switches on some lights. And some days our “Love the Lord your God” is turned down on the level that we love old pickup trucks and squirrels. And other days our “Love the Lord your God” is turned all the way to 11 (to reference Spinal Tap and Tom T. hall in the same devotional).
Listen for the Whisper that tells you that it’s always supposed to be turned up to 11. God loved you enough to die for you on a cross. So be holy because He is holy. And love the Lord your God with all of your heart, soul, strength and mind. With all that you are…always. We’ve all been there, though...the days when the world seems against us, and nothing’s going right, and it’s bad news after bad news and “the hits just keep on coming!” and if it weren’t for bad luck, I’d have no luck at all and what ELSE could go wrong. And even in those times, we’re to love the Lord our God with all of our heart, soul, strength and mind. Just like Job. We don’t really like to talk about Job, though – because Job scares us just a little bit. But through our fears, and our worries, and our failures, and our successes and our joy, God is there. And He still died for you. So the next time you use the word “love”, remember that God is Love. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 13:13 “And now these three remain: Faith, Hope and Love. And the greatest of these is Love” because God is Love. Not all of human love is the same love, but our love for God should be. Like the cheesy radio commercials say, you need to crank it to 11 and then rip the knob off! God’s love is perfect love, and He gave it to you when He didn’t have to. So crank your love for Him to 11 and rip the knob off!
~Dwayne
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