We talked about priorities last week, and I explained that God must be number one on my list or everything else seems to fail. Interesting that He puts your love of Him as number one on His list (the Ten Commandments if you’re not following me). He values His relationship with you and hopes that you reciprocate.
Letting God Be Your Shepherd
“The Lord is my shepherd…”
~ Psalm 23:1
God is a good shepherd. He is always looking out for your well-being, your happiness, your joy, hoping that you find passion and purpose, and everlasting peace. We spend our lives searching for these, in all the wrong people, places, and things. The problem is that only He knows how to get there. You have to let Him lead you.
And He isn’t going to lead you to a place or a state of mind. He is going to lead you to Himself, into deeper relationship with Him. In a sense it is kind of about the journey, because our goal is to know God intimately and as we follow Him throughout our lives He reveals Himself to us little by little and we fall deeper and deeper in love with Him.
So it’s not like we can reach a certain point on the journey and say we’ve arrived. We are always moving, whether closer or further from Him. Just like a husband and wife can never stop learning about each other, can never stop falling love with each other, neither can we stop growing in relationship with God.
When We Stray from the Path
“So I am going to allure her, lead her once more into the desert, where I can speak to her tenderly.”
~ Hosea 2:16
That’s not from a romance novel, that’s from the Bible, God’s Word. And that’s how He feels about you. There are times when we become distracted, disillusioned, and turn away. But He never gives up. He always calls us back to Himself.
Sometimes that means leading us into the desert where we experience difficulty, where we experience want, where there is nothing or nobody to distract us from Him. He wants to remind us how much He loves us. So He speaks tenderly to our hearts. He allows us to find ourselves in a situation where we need Him once again.
And the love affair begins again. The romance is rekindled.