And I lift my voice to worship You
Oh my soul, rejoice!
Take joy, my King, in what you hear
May it be a sweet, sweet sound in Your ear.
I love this song because it's nothing more than an honest declaration of our love to God. We cry out to our God, lifting our voices to Him while demanding that our souls rejoice because of all that we have and experience through our God. We rejoice in the fact that our action of worshipping and loving, and being loved by our Father is all that we need to sustain us through this life; because, after all, we were all created to worship and have communion with God. The song ends with the simple request that what we sing, what we say and what we do would be pleasing to God. Indeed, our lives, as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, is our spiritual act of worship.
Even though I love this song, at times I've found it difficult to sing. Not because I'm not rejoicing in God. Nor because I don't want to be pleasing to God. But because of the simple confession of my love for God.
As I look back on my Christian life, I can say a few things with certainty. I've been faithful. I've been obedient. I've followed after God. And all of these things out of my love for God. But when I think about whether or not I've truly loved Him, I cannot say that I have with full confidence.
My love for God was stuck in that position of love between a God and the creation. The love between a Father and a son. But as I've been living life, I've realized that this is not enough. That perhaps God wants a deeper, more intense, more intimate love.
Although we may not categorize our love for God in the same way we would categorize a romantic love with a spouse or a significant other, I believe that the same intense desire is demanded. I have to even question whether or not the first assumption is true, whether or not our love for God is the same as a romantic love. After all, the Bible does begin with the marriage of Adam and Eve and ends with the marriage of Christ and His church. Not to mention, God is the source of all love. Even the romantic aspects.
When people are in love, it's quite easy to notice. They eagerly await a response to a text, they constantly think about their beloved, they go completely out of their way to spend just a moment with the one they cherish so dearly. You may say that this is just infatuation or merely a honeymoon phase, but I truly believe that these are the moments of pure, untainted, unaltered love. The moments when hour long commutes are nothing compared to the few minutes spent. The moments when we go completely out of our way to get a glimpse of our love. The moments when someone would be willing to die for the one they love rather than see them in pain. I believe that this is the kind of love God has for us. That He waits for us to kneel down before Him and spend a moment in prayer. That He pushes certain events into our lives so that we would run back to Him when we have nowhere else to go. That He would send His Son to die so that we might have even just a chance of returning to His open arms.
We love like this as well. We get giddy with excitement when we hear the name of the person we adore. We get butterflies when that special someone walks in through the door. We get angry when another says something negative about our significant other. Some of us will even pursue long distance relationships, traveling hours, just to maintain a connection with the one we love.
Unfortunately, most of us cannot say that we love God in the same way. I cannot remember the last time I went to sleep eagerly awaiting the morning so I could spend my day worshipping Him. I cannot remember the last time I got angry when someone misused the name of my God. I cannot remember the last time I spent hours on my knees praying to Him.
Sure, we serve Him. We obey Him. We follow diligently after Him. All out of love. But do we truly love Him? We so often say that Christianity is not a religion but a relationship. Is there love in this relationship? Or are we just blindly serving Christ? Like I said, some may say that a romantic love isn't the kind of love we should have for God. I disagree. I believe our love for God should be reflective of every type of love that we know. Romantic, familial, servant-like; every type of love that could be fulfilled by God. After all, He is our bridegroom. He is our Father. He is our Lord.
I'm not particularly one to show emotions. I strongly believe that Christianity involves much more than just feelings and emotions. But a while ago, I had been weeping over my love for God. Over how I would get so excited over a human, but barely anticipate the coming of my eternal Lord. As I prayed, I realized a lot of others are this way as well. Of course, I'm in no position to judge how much one love's God. But if our lovers asked us to introduce them to our friends, would we not do so? If our lovers asked us to speak with them for hours, would we not do so? If our lovers asked us to go away with them for days, would we not do so? Would we do the same for our God?
I truly pray that we, as Disciple Church, our love for God would be unrivaled in our lives. That we would wait eagerly for the seconds we get to spend with our God. That people would look at us and say that we are obsessed with our God. That in comparison to God, our love for everything else would appear as hate. That we would simply love.
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