More Like Falling in Love

Give me rules, I will break them.

Show me lines, I will cross them.

I need more than truth to believe.

I need a truth that lives, moves and breathes to sweep me off my feet.

It’s gotta be more like falling in love than something to believe in.

Jason Gray- More Like Falling in Love

If you have followed this blogging journey for a bit, we’ve stepped, climbed, run, shoveled, hoped, prayed, wondered, and even wandered. But we haven’t yet fallen.

Someday, we’re gonna have to fall or we’ve missed the entire point of the journey.

How exactly do you fall in love with Jesus? The God man who moves through the pages of ancient text? How exactly do you fall in love with Jesus when you are just barely convinced He is more than a God man who moves through the pages of ancient texts?

I’d give you the one, two, three steps, if I knew them. I’d even add a fourth step for good measure. But if you’ve ever fallen in love, you know this isn’t how it works. You can’t formula fit an algorithm for falling in love. It often happens at the most inopportune time, unexpectedly and has the potential for disrupting one’s well-controlled life.

I can though share with you my four step (times many) story. Because who doesn’t like a story, especially one with a happy ending?

Jesus was the one who loved me. I knew this, from the time I was three or four or whenever it was I could piece together a song with a simple melody and repetitive words. He was the baby from Christmas, the dying man at Easter, the one whose name we borrowed when we prayed. I comprehended little, but I grew to know more, to like His book, to study His book. My prayers evolved, my heart grew warm during worship. I experienced Jesus more than as a man from a book. But fall in love? Not so much.

Then my world crashed. Translate, I couldn’t get what I wanted and a whole string of unwise decisions brought me to the realization that all I had pursued left me broken. All I could get on my own could not fill my heart, but instead hurt it. It is a most precarious place to be, at the end of oneself. For if you are ever at risk of falling in love with a man who moves through pages of ancient text, it is here, at the end of oneself.

Being the schooled Christian that I was, and recognizably at the end of myself, I began to pray most fervently. I began to listen to Bible teachers (incessantly) and I began to read the Bible without ceasing. One teacher in particular, who I had listened to for many years, repeatedly referenced her love for Jesus. I succinctly remember thinking, either she is a liar or I want what she has. And thus began my pursuit to love Jesus (although if you’ve ever fallen on this path yourself, you will know that this was not my pursuit at all but only my response to His pursuit of me, one that had begun many, many years before…what can I say? I am a slow responder).

Now this is the part that may help you, if you, like me, have ever leaned in the slightest direction that those who gush about loving Jesus may well be delusional liars.

Because I didn’t know how to love Jesus (no problem believing God incarnate came to save me from my sins but a tremendous barrier in knowing what a relationship with Him entailed, outside of my ability to fail at following His rules…), I had to ask for His help. What else can one do once they’ve gotten to the end of themselves, but ask for help. So with all earnestness of heart, I asked Him to open my eyes to see His hands moving. If I was going to fall in love, I had to know He was real. And not real as in God is in the sky watching over me, like a distant referee, taking in my prayers. I had to know He was real, like here, now, listening. I had to know He cared about me, in my present mess. So I asked, over and over and over again to see what He was doing, to make His presence known. I asked for days, weeks, months. And He showed me, for days, weeks and months, over and over and over again. He would show me in the morning by responding in the most specific ways and by the afternoon, I was asking again. So He would show me again.

If you want to fall in love with Jesus, ask Him to show up and reveal Himself to you (again and again and again). He will.

By the time I really started believing God was not only real, but close and listening, I could feel way down in the pit of my stomach that my interest in Him was driven by a desire for something I wanted, something I knew only He could give me. So here I was, not just intellectually aware that God was real, close and listening, but spiritually in tune with His presence. I was also aware that I was trying to manipulate Him because I wanted something. I could feel it and I felt terrible about it (secretly, of course). This is no way to fall in love, so I prayed what David prayed in Psalm 51:10, “Create in me a pure heart, O God”. I prayed this over and over and over again.

If you want to fall in love with Jesus, ask Him to purify your heart (again and again and again). He will.

About this time, He began to break my heart. He did not do this in a way that was cruel or harsh, but slowly and relentlessly. He broke my heart over my own sin, my absence, my selfishness, my preoccupation with my Amazon order list of what I wanted (and wanted immediately). He broke my heart by revealing to me that He loved me, that He was patient, kind, and not self-seeking. He was not rude, not boastful, and not easily angered. He kept no record of my wrongs (not even the secret ones). A humbling experience, when someone like that loves you, melting your heart in a most beautiful way.

The breaking, purifying of my heart did not happen overnight or even in a few short weeks. It’s an always going on kind of thing. But I can tell when something is beginning to get between my heart and His, even if I cannot name the something. When this happens, I go back to David, but this time to his prayer recorded in a different Psalm.

“Search me, O God, and know my heart, test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.” Psalm 139:23-24 NIV

In my head it sounds more like this…search my heart, know what it is that I cannot name but do not like, the thing that keeps me preoccupied with myself, my circumstances, my plans, my control. Show me what to surrender that I cannot surrender, come in close and climb over the walls I have built to keep you out.

To be honest, I have to pray this often. I don’t know what it is about being preoccupied with myself, but it happens a lot and it leaves me befuddled and without clear direction.

If you want to fall in love with Jesus, ask Him to search your heart for what you don’t want Him to find (again and again and again). He will.

Lastly (well not lastly, but lastly in relation to the four step bullet points of how I fell in love with Jesus), and this is the best one, I asked Him to delight my heart. Now this is a bold prayer, because by now I knew He was real, present, listening and interested. I had asked Him to create in me a pure heart and reluctantly asked Him to search my heart, and so I was well aware of my own unworthiness to ask Him for anything (that He hadn’t previously cast me to hell to wallow in my own self-pity was in itself a miracle). But that same teacher who I had once thought was perhaps a liar or had something I wanted, challenged me to ask. This is what she said, “Ask Him to delight your heart, and ask Him everyday”. So I did, everyday. David writes it this way in Psalm 37:4 (NIV), “Delight yourself in the LORD and He will give you the desires of your heart”. Only I had no ability to delight myself in the LORD, so I asked the LORD to do it for me. I asked Him to delight my heart over and over and over again. He did. He knocked my socks off delighting my heart (He still does).

Has Jesus ever knocked your socks off? Shown up in a way or given you a gift that could only be from Him, that only He knew about, that only He heard you whisper under your breath as the hurting tears ran down your face? Oh, if He hasn’t, He might just be waiting for you to ask. And if He has only done it once, He might just be waiting for you to ask again.

If you want to fall in love with Jesus, ask Him to delight your heart (again and again and again). He will.

Others may begin to think you are a delusional liar, or maybe they will want what you have…but at least you will have fallen and fallen hard.

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Give me words, I’ll misuse them.

Obligations, I’ll misplace them.

Cause all religion ever made of me was a sinner with a stone tied to my feet.

And love has set me free.

It’s gotta be more like falling in love than something to believe in.

More like losing my heart than giving my allegiance.

Jason Gray – More Like Falling in Love