God’s love is not proportional to my activity for God

Still more thoughts from Running on Empty. 🙂

What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us. – A.W. Tozer

Here’s the mind shift that has changed in me over the past two weeks…

“I’m convinced that my need for constant activity is deeply rooted in terribly flawed images of God, images of my own making. The root cause of my busyness might be explained this way: My default nature is set to believe that God’s acceptance, love, and care for me is directly proportional to my level of activity for God.”

• We believe the more I do for God, the more God will love me.
• This has dictated my every waking activity more than anything else. And it’s threatening to starve my soul.
• I came to think of God as someone I controlled. I could make God angry, sad, or happy simply by choosing how to act. If I did enough good things, God was happy.
• Our relationship with God is not the result of our efforts. Rather, a loving and gracious God acted on our behalf, granting us a most benevolent gift.

“Coming to see that God has searched me out and found me – and not the other way around – was breathtaking. I’m beginning to understand that my faith in God is oftentimes greater when I rest than when I am busy. For a compulsive overachiever, this was a revolutionary thought. The truth that God could love me just as I was, without my doing a thing for him, seemed too good to be true.”

• God can’t love me anymore than God already does.
• I’ve been granted a more solid character, a more peaceful nature, and a quieter, more tender, more teachable heart.

“The primary reason I’ve struggled with the love of God is the simple fact that it’s like no other love I’ve ever known. All the other love I’ve encountered has had something to do with me. My actions somehow preceded the love and proved it conditional. I may have been loved because of my reputation, my possessions, or my talents. But being loved by God is different. God’s love is unique in that it has nothing to do with me. God hasn’t chosen to love me because of things about me that God finds lovable. It is God’s nature to love, and so God loves me naturally.”

But my default nature is to doubt all of that. So I spend time with God in solitude, prayer, study and journaling each morning so that my awareness of this reality increases. I am so thankful I crossed paths with this book. It’s brought into focus many things I needed to face.