In Love?

As God does so very often, when He is trying to get my attention on a certain point, or He wants me to change direction, I will hear the same message from many different formats.

For quite a while I have given God all the love I have, and have prayed for more - because in myself I can't love my Papa, Friend, Lover, Savior with just what is in me.

My heart and emotions were first caught with this amazing song from Eddie James. I wanna be an extravagant lover/ an offering sacrifice for thee/ I find in you my passion and pleasure/ I am consumed with a spirit of burning/ lay down lover/ that's what I wanna be/ that's what I wanna be/ love sick warrior/ your all I wanna see/ I give my all to thee  My heart leapt, and still I sing this song over and over.  I WANT to LOVE God will all I have within me.

Then as I was in my daily devotional Oswald Chambers "my utmost for His highest", the first sentence on Jan. 21 is "Am I as spontaneously kind to God as I used to be?"  Wow.  My first question was have I ever been spontaneously kind to God.  He goes on to ask "Am I full of the little things that cheer His heart over me?"  "Am I as full of the extravagance of love to Jesus Christ as I was in the beginning, when I went out of my way to prove my devotion to Him?"  Wow, this is very hard for me.  I grew up in church and "loved" God the way I thought I was supposed to, until last year, when my dependence became on God alone, and I fell deeply in love with Him.  Did I ever love my King like that?  And the last statement for that day is "If, as I recall what God remembers about me, I find He is not what He used to be to me, LET IT PRODUCE SHAME AND HUMILIATION, because that shame will bring the godly sorrow that works repentance."  My cry is/was my God, help me to love You more than ever before, in the way You desire to be loved.  

But even that is not were it ends.  This weekend as I visited the Ramp, Damon Thompson preached on First Love.  And he started out of Rev 2, where God is speaking to the church in Ephesus.  They were great at works, but had "lost" their first love.  They loved God, but had lost their first love.  One of the first things that stood out is "He will not accept other sucesses if you lose your first love- everything must flow out of first love."  How do we attain our first love?  Think back to our first works, and how much we LOVED God in everything we did.  Okay.  Though that is what I want, I was still not there.  Like I said, I don't remember having or had a first love.  But these two points really stuck out at me as well. "If dominion does not come out of intimacy, it is unauthorized"  If we work out of ourselves or lost love, we are not working in the authority or dominion of Christ.  No wonder he says "depart from me I knew you not, but Lord we did ...... all these things in your name"   They had known of God, but did not have an intimacy with God.

How can I live these truths out every day?  How do I have/ keep a first love that I never expierenced?  I give to the lost and hurting.  I give to the widows and orphans.  I love the unloveable.  I pray because I can't wait to hear what He wants to speak to me today.  I read His word, and re read His word, because I can't get enough.  I find those around me that are lost and live a life of love and truth to them (in action).  I SO hate my sin and get so angry at my sin, that it incites change with in me.
Lord I ask for Your grace and favor in these area's.  That I can truly love You, in the way You deserve to be loved.  May I seek after you as a lover running through the streets, not stopping until I find You.