Fidelity

I never love nobody fully
Always one foot on the ground
And by protecting my heart truly,
I got lost in the sounds
I hear in my mind all these voices
I hear in my mind all these words
I hear in my mind all this music
And it breaks my heart

Way back in the day, a youth group leader said that the eternal love within the person of the Trinity is why God doesn't NEED us to love Him. On the other hand, we're not triune, and we need love to keep us grounded. The problem with love is that it's a bit of a gamble. When you love another person, your allowing the possibility of that person hurting you. We get nervous about that, but we need the love so badly. There's this huge tearing sound, as we try to give a little bit of ourselves up, without actually risking anything.

With Christ, we don't act much different. We know we should love Him, to fully follow what he's told us, but we're deathly afraid of what He's going to ask us to do, so we never fully commit. We fail to realize that by not fully committing, we're not allowing Him to do anything, we're not demonstrating our love. The refusal to open up is not only a refusal to completely love, but to allow oneself to BE loved effectively. And to refuse to allow Jesus to love us as much as he wants to is simply foolish. We only hinder ourselves in our Christian life. Think of the term "pot committed" in poker. That's when you have so much money in the middle that you have to follow it through to the end. If someone else goes all in, so much of your money is in the pot that there is no way you can back out. By getting saved, you became "pot committed" to Christ, Most of your chips are in the middle. If you don't throw the rest of them in, your missing out on the payoff, but we insist on holding, just a tiny bit back, because we're afraid.

Our fear is that God will ask us to do something we don't want to, but since when are our desires the arbiter of what is good for us? I want Better Maid BBQ potato chips. They're awesome, I could eat bags at a time. And I would die in 5 years of congestive heart failure. I have to remove my desires from the decision and eat, say, grapefruit instead. And what do you know, I find that grapefruit tastes pretty good, and I'll be around longer to enjoy it. If we submit our desires to God's will for us, we may not find that we suddenly are completely happy with our circumstances. But in the long run, the payoff is enormous, not only in terms of personal fulfillment in Christ, but also in heaven.