EXTRAVAGANT WITH HIM

Earlier this week, I wrote “Extravagant with Us,” – how God lavishes His love upon us extravagantly. If you missed it, click on ‘older posts’ and you should find it there.

That post and this one are based on the statement “If He can be extravagant with us, why can’t we be extravagant with Him?”

What is preventing us from being extravagant with Him? Maybe we think we are being extravagant. After all, we pray a quick prayer before falling asleep at night and we try to give a little extra in our offering at Christmas time. It’s not enough.

Perhaps we have been wounded so deeply in our past by a parent(s) or significant other that we hold a part of ourselves – a part of our heart – separate from everyone – including God. Because we are afraid of being hurt like that again, we protect our hearts and ourselves. It’s not enough.

It’s possible that you do not see yourself in either of the above scenarios, yet, you know that your relationship with God is not where it should be. It’s more of an acquaintance than friendship. More of a friendship than Father and child. More of a Father and child than lovers. Yes, lovers. Read the Song of Solomon, as I suggested on Monday. It is the love story between Christ the Bridegroom and His Church, the Bride. Solomon writes in his Song, “I [you, me, the Church] am my Beloved’s [God] and He is mine.”(explanation: mine) What better way to explain the relationship between God and His Church? But does it explain our relationship—our current relationship? If it doesn’t, what’s missing?

In his book, The Sacred Romance, John Eldredge answers this question: “What He is after is us—our laughter, our tears, our dreams, our fears, our heart of hearts. Remember his lament in Isaiah, that though his people were performing all their duties, ‘their hearts are far from me’ (Is. 29:13). How few of us truly believe this. We’ve never been wanted for our heart, our truest self, not really, not for long. The thought that God wants our heart seems too good to be true.”

The way to be extravagant with Him is to give Him everything—ourselves—our heart. We can trust Him. He is not out to “get us or get even with us.” He wants us to participate with Him in the greatest love story ever written. And when we do, that longing, lovesick feeling we have in our hearts will be there no more.

My prayer for each of us today is that we will surrender ourselves and everything about us to Him and that we will truly recognize and experience His love for us every day for as long as we live.

Romans 8:38-39: “For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

1 Eldredge, John, The Sacred Romance. Page 91.