The Order to Loving Well
“To love you as I should, I must worship God as Creator. When I have learnt to love God better than my earthly dearest, I shall love my earthly dearest better than I do now. In so far as I learn to love my earthly dearest at the expense of God and instead of God, I shall be moving towards the state in which I shall not love my earthly dearest at all. When first things are put first, second things are not suppressed but increased.” — C.S Lewis
Strip Away the Idols: Love God First
In January I had the privilege of getting to hear my close friend, Ava, teach at her church on The Spiritual Discipline of Worship (1 Chronicles 16).
She placed heavy emphasis on the fact that “we are created to worship our Creator. But too often we twist the good things from God to become our priority over God. And yet idols will always fall.”
When we try to put something (or someone) in the place of God we will always be let down, and, if it was a relationship, we will subsequently let down the other person as well.
Nothing and no one can stand between you and God.
No
Job
Friend
Spouse
Sport
N O T H I N G
Kyle Idleman’s book Gods At War and C.S Lewis’s famous Screwtape Letters detail the war between idols and the threat of allowing “good things” to become “god things” far better than I. Your life and faith will seriously be forever changed by The Screwtape Letters. However, if you want to hear my personal lessons learned on idols you can find an essay I wrote on the topic under my portfolio tab. The essay is titled “Not allowing ‘good’ to become ‘God.’” For now let’s move onto properly ordering our relationships.
Triangular Relationships:
Picture every relationship in your life as a triangle, a pyramid. God is the point at the top. You are a corner at the bottom. The family member, friend, spouse, job, sport you are in relationship with is the other corner at the bottom.
If you look horizontally, from your corner to the other bottom corner, you will always be let down. Looking horizontally is making the thing in that corner an idol. You have to look vertically, up to God, for satisfaction and fulfillment.
It is only by first having that vertical connection to your Creator, the One with perfect love, that you can love well and maintain a healthy horizontal connection with anyone/anything.
Only by drawing near to God can people draw near to each other: climbing the triangle upwards so the distance between them shrinks.
This is the order to loving well: God then everything else
Happy Birthday, Dad! Thank you for all the ways you have taught us the importance of the order of love, its a blessing to be your daughter. It’s a privilege to be loved and protected by you. On some level you are the one who taught me to love story and words as you told us tales each night before bed — This one’s for you!