Most of us know we’re pretty poor servants of Jesus. We’re just earthen vessels that easily break. We often muddle and stumble along as best we can, like little kids who make a bigger mess trying to help than if the parents had just done it themselves. (How many times has Jesus had to clean up after me). Yet somehow even our feeble, flawed love for him brings a smile to his face.
I’m so grateful Christ bled on the cross for all the imperfections of my bungling love and halting, feeble affection. And grateful that even my match-flame of desire delights him, because he’s the one who lit that fire in my heart, no matter how small it seems.
If I Have a Deeper Love for Jesus and Want to Love Him More…It Changes My Focus
Instead of focusing on my lack of love for Jesus, I focus on his love for me.
We love because he first loved us. 1 JN 4.19
See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are… 1 JN 3.1
But God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. RO 5.8
No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. RO 8.37-39
The best way to start your day is to call to mind his love for you:
But this I call to mind,
and therefore I have hope:
The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases;
his mercies never come to an end;
they are new every morning;
great is your faithfulness. LA 3:21-23
So let us focus on God’s incredible love for us, and ask him to keep fanning the flame of our love for him. Here is my hope. I don’t love Jesus as much as I should, but I will. Increasingly. For all eternity.
Remember the Depth of Your Forgiveness for a Deeper Love for Jesus
In Luke 7 a woman of ill repute shows up at a meal Jesus is attending in a Pharisee?s home. She breaks open a flask of expensive ointment, then, weeping over Jesus’ feet, wipes them with her hair and anoints them with the oil.
The Pharisee, named Simon, most likely disgusted that Jesus would let this unclean woman touch him, thinks if Jesus were a prophet he’d know the kind of woman this is and have nothing to do with her. Jesus tells him:
A certain moneylender had two debtors. One owed five hundred denarii, and the other fifty. When they could not pay, he cancelled the debt of both. Now which of them will love him more, Simon answered, “The one, I suppose, for whom he cancelled the larger debt.” And he said to him, “You have judged rightly.” (41-43)
