I said in a previous post that we cannot find God by reason. Well you do not find your significant other by reason, you encountered him or her. And they become your significant other by allowing you (and you allowing them) to come to know you. You do it by opening your heart to them and they to you.
And these relationships work best, when they are exclusive. Its not that you cannot, and should not have other friends, but one man one woman seems to be the way that best satisfies the heart. Shall we say the more significant others you have, the less significant each one is. In fact, as we are told in the fifth chapter of the book of Ephesians, the marriage relationship of the Christian is meant to be a picture of our relationship with God. So then the first commandment is to love God with all your heart and soul and mind and strength, or as the Decalog has it, the first commandments is to have no other gods.
Western gods are different from the gods of Bible times. I heard a sermon one time which outlined four prison guards that keep us from God (four idols if you like). They are:- People, Possessions, Power (control) and Procrastination (putting it off)
It amazed me how negative some of my friends were to my conversion (going on 40 years ago), materialism is well known to be where we put our hearts, given our rugged north American individualism control is also a biggie, and then which one of us does not put things off?
My own conversion came only when I became desperate enough to try anything. I was devastated over the separation from my daughter, she in England and I here in Canada. It came to me over and over 'You don't have to love her'. “Yes I do, she is my daughter and if I don't love her in this God forsaken world (which is how I thought of it), who will?” So over and over I would choose to love her. It was like hitting my head against a brick wall. In the end it took the good right out of me, and I became desperate enough to try even God.
We are invited to “Taste and see that the Lord is good”. I was desperate enough to try anything for sure, but if it had not been real it would never have held me. He is real, and He is good, but both before and after conversion, we can allow things to come in and crowd Him out (or keep him out ). Or as the Bible puts it, “the cares of this world, the deceitfulness of riches, and the desires for other things entering in choke the word, and it becomes unfruitful”.
He wants us to love Him and to seek Him with all of our heart. We seek Him with our reason too, that is what loving Him with our mind is all about. We may discover things about Him with our mind, but it is in the heart that we find Him. He is not interested in limp (unresponsive) lovers, neither probably are you.
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Best (so far) of a series of good posts.
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