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"Noah was a righteous man,
blameless in his own time;
Noah walked with
God." (Genesis 6:9)
Accidental
Intimacy
Nobody falls in love. Infatuation,
occasionally. Lust, all too often. But not love
-- not the kind of love that Jesus speaks of
in the gospels -- not the kind of love that Paul
writes about in his epistles.
The
love of Christ is demanding and deliberate. We don't
accidentally love our enemies or forgive those who hurt
us. Such love requires a great deal of intentionality
from us.
This
partly explains the failure of so many marriages in our
day. They begin with enthusiasm, romance, hope, and
excitement. But, over time, they fail to practice
intentional love. And the apathy leads to increasing
(sometimes unbridgeable) distance.
Authentic
love acts sacrificially and selflessly, and emerges from
constant decisions and calculations. Nobody "falls" into
it.
What
is true of our friendships and marriages is equally true
of our walk with God.
When Scripture says that Noah "walked
with God," we can assume that this happened deliberately on
his part. In a world filled with corruption
and violence, as Noah's world was, to walk with
God surely required disciplined steps. It's unimaginable that Noah
lived like his peers but had a free pass to God's
Presence.
In our own world of
distraction and deception, walking with God requires
similar focus.
Few of us will find ourselves
accidentally close to God. We do not irresistibly "fall"
in love with Him and stay there. His grace may sweep us
off our feet initially, but only the discipline and
intentionality of love can keep us "off balance."
William
Law, writing in 1728, suggested that all of the
disorders of our lives result from our lack of serious
intention to please God. We hope that our casual
acknowledgement of His reality will produce
transformational circumstances in our lives, but all the
while we are far more serious about pursuing our careers
than pursuing Christ.
How deliberate have you been
recently about your walk with Christ? Do you expect
divine intimacy to develop
accidentally? Our
failure to step decisively towards Him results
inevitably in a distance from Him.
Let's decide to
embrace Him more fully this week and, armed with a
strategic plan, press a little harder after Him. That's what
love does, in our marriages, friendships, and
faith.
In HOPE --
David |
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