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why we don't go home


alternative to love

Why worry about the state of your soul? Why seek more from God? Well, why seek more from your marriage? The Bible compares God's loving relationship to his people to a husband's relationship to his wife. However, since love for God and love for spouse have both grown cold, it becomes ever harder for us to understand what God meant, or to even care. For some couples, it's hard to imagine wanting to die for each other. For some Christians, it's hard to believe (as opposed to mentally assent) that Jesus wanted to die for them. But when you were first falling in love, was a visit to your loved one an obligation, or was it joy? Did Romeo spend regular time beneath Juliet's window to keep her from getting mad at him, or because nothing could have kept him away? Imagine a man married to an international beauty queen, recording artist, best-selling author and prize-winning researcher, who nevertheless adored him above her career or anything in the world. Yet instead of being with his wife, this man spent his free time playing darts in the pub. God's love for you, and value to you, is infinitely greater than that man's wife. Does that mean if we neglect God, we are infinitely more foolish than that man?

Consider this: if your fiancee loved you as much as you love God, would you break off the engagement? Soon God's people will become his bride, though you don't have to take part in that. Once the marriage takes place, if not before, his people will do nothing but worship him and praise him. Does that thought disturb you, of never ceasing to praise God? Do you have a hard time doing it now? Does the thought make heaven seem enslaving or boring? You don't have to take part in that either. However, you may not like the alternative. There will be no alternative in heaven.

defending yourself against God

The farther from God that you realize yourself to be, the closer you really become. Redemption is not a strain for him, as if you were helping him out by giving him fewer things to redeem. Being one of God's people is not a matter of finding natural virtues in yourself and displaying them instead of your natural weaknesses. It's a matter of coming to God without bringing any natural virtues or goodness. If you have any, they aren't natural anyway -- God gave them to you. It's not even a matter of trusting God to add virtues where you have weaknesses, or of coming to him the first time with empty hands then taking up your own virtues again. Your own virtues are your defense against God. When he marches forth to conquer your heart, you're telling him that some parts of you don't need to be conquered. What you really mean is that you're going to try to keep God from conquering them, and until the final judgement, you may succeed. Your heart's goal is not to surrender at all, and if surrender becomes necessary (it will happen in the end), let it not be an unconditional surrender. Let me not ever be defenseless, we say, even in the face of God. But he attacks us only to become our only defender.

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