Lenses of Love: Affection
Love is affection.
Do you delight in God? Do you enjoy Him? Do you love Him?
My family was having dinner the other day. We were sitting there eating, and I was lost in my thoughts. I’m not sure whether I was thinking about the day, or things that were coming up — probably all of the above. This happens occasionally, and every once in a while Joanna will see me crack a grin, or make some facial expression and she will ask: What are you thinking about? In this particular occasion, a memory with a good friend popped into my head, and with this particular friend, I couldn’t help but smile.
What Joanna was observing was something natural, and right. And you hear it in the very language of “I couldn’t help but smile.” Without any intentional effort of my own, I smile when I think of Andrew. And more often than not, I laugh.
What happens when you think of God?
Does it produce guilt, or fear, or worry? Do rules or commands come to mind? Do you feel regret for not reading or praying enough? Do you respond closer to the way one would respond to a disappointed dad or boss?
If your mind wandered off into thoughts of God, would you get caught smiling?
Do you not only know of God, but have experienced his love in a way that influences your emotions, that warms your heart?
What you know of God, and what you deep down believe of God, are those in alignment? Do you know God is love, and also experience that to be true? Is it one of the first things that comes to mind?
When we think of God, his love ought to be one of the first things we think about. Scripture tell us that God is love, that He has demonstrated His love to us, that He has poured his love out on us and even in us through His Holy Spirit.
Increasing Our Affections for Him
One way we can increase our affectionate love for God is to recognize Him as the giver of all good things (because He is). So we simply recognize what is true.
Psalm 19 shows us that all of creation is declaring and proclaiming the glory of God to us. James tell us that:
“Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.”
1 Timothy tells us that these good gifts are to be “received with thankfulness.” And I think we know this. This is probably not a new concept to you — to trace the gift back with thankfulness to the giver of the gift. I hope you have a habit of doing this, but I also think we can be prone to cut the process short.
Sometimes we never look to the giver at all. We receive the good gifts in our lives as things we have earned or are entitled to, rather than with thankfulness knowing they are undeserved graces on us.
Other times we short circuit the process by acknowledging the giver of the gift while still keeping much, if not all, of our attention and affection on the gift rather than the giver.
For us to follow all the way through is not just to acknowledge gratitude to God and give him a hat tip, but to be drawn to the loving and gracious giver and dwell there for a while. To linger long enough for the joy of the good thing to be increased and overtaken by the joy and love for the God who gave it.
Do you give your heart and soul enough time to move that way? Do your affections for created things make the transition to affections for God? Do they cause you to love Him and worship Him? And not just God as the giver of gifts, but the giver of salvation from your sin?
Or, does God stay in the background in a way that your affection never actually makes the shift to the giver instead of the gift? Love fully understood is relational, so our love is misguided and also limited if it focuses on material things rather than on people, and ultimately on the person of God.
If I take the example of my friend Andrew, you can see grace upon grace. I can see that it isn’t just fun to golf, but it is fun to golf with Andrew. And the laughs, and conversations, and memories aren’t something we could fabricate if we tried. They are a gift from God to give us those joys, and those memories. So to smile at the thought of these memories ought also to be to smile at the thought of a God who love us and gave us those things. And, to follow it all the way, is to not just see a loving God in general, but a loving God who demonstrated his love for us by dying for us. The greatest gift is that we are saved from our sins and we get a restored relationship with God as the result.
Many may say they love God for making them successful or blessed, but to love God for who He is, is to see your sin and rebellion and to love him as your savior.
Blessings may come and go, but He remains constant as our loving savior.
So let’s break out and discuss the idea that love includes genuine affection.
Discussion
1. When you think of the love of God, does it warm your heart towards him? If not, what does it tend to produce?
2. Do you trace good gifts all the way back to God so that he becomes the main focus?
3. What helps you see God behind all good things?
