To be consumed with something to the point where it’s all you think about. Have you ever had something that has caught your interest in this way? It could be a job, or a class, a sport, a crush, even a video game when you were a kid. There truly is an excitement that gets mustered up when all we can think about is participating in that which is fully interesting to us. 

This has always been a source of struggle for me when it comes to my relationship with the Lord. People talk about how we need to desire the Lord above everything else. The problem is desire isn’t something you can white-knuckle into existence. You don’t wake up one morning and decide, you know what, I’m going to just love this one thing more than all other things. So, what do we do when God isn’t the “thing” we desire most on this Thursday morning?

To answer this question, it’ll be helpful to recall how we ended up being interested in the things that have fully captured our attentions. Baseball and, don’t judge me, World of Warcraft are two things that come to mind here. Both consumed my attention at one point in my life. And, again, looking back it wasn’t like there was a moment where I decided to from this moment forward devote my attention to baseball. There was just a day when I looked up and I realized it had. Maybe it was the day during choir practice in middle school when I found myself taking dry swings as I was suffering through learning another Christmas song in September to prepare for our winter play.

There was a day when I had never played baseball, it had never been a part of my life. Then I went to my first T-ball practice, learned how to throw and catch and swing. I learned the rules to the game. Even then, I wasn’t hooked just yet. But as I continued to spend time over the course of those first years, something was developing inside of me. I continued to choose to want to play, I worked hard to get better, and somewhere along the way it had me. I was in. I loved baseball.

My point here is that this didn’t happen in a single moment or with a single choice. It happened over an extended amount of time participating in the game. For both our sakes, I won’t bore you with how the video game World of Warcraft stole my heart. You can ask me that elsewhere, for now I’ll just say, for the horde!

Our walks with the Lord may be much more like this idea than we understand. For those of you that have been in love before, there are very clear parallels here as well. Sure, when you see that person for the first time or have that first conversations there can be a whole number of things going on your mind. Generally, there’s an exceptional amount of interest and intrigue. I know there are some out there who claim to have fallen in love at first glance, and I don’t want to write that off. However, I’d argue that the term falling in love is quite an accurate descriptor. Falling implies time, momentum, starting at point A and arriving or heading towards point B. To land the plane, it isn’t a singular moment.

You then end up choosing to spend more and more time with that person and what do you know, you realize you actually love this person. That love is the product of all the time you’ve put in up until that moment. There will be a moment where this all comes to a point of realization but under the hood this has been a process that has been brewing for some time now.

Friends, our walk with the Lord is no different. And it’s for this reason that it’s futile to think that we can wake up one morning and decide to be in love with Jesus and have Him be value numero uno. No, I think our relationship with Jesus is incredibly similar to our relationship with anyone else. It takes time, effort, momentum, and attention. Loving Jesus is a product of spending time knowing more about Him via experiences in His Word, in creation, in prayer, and by choosing to be obedient to His commands and follow in how He lived His life here on earth.

Our hearts are oh so quick to wander. Even my love for baseball began to fade, in part because I allowed other things to come in and fill its place. If we don’t fight to protect the things we love in our heart and in our minds, something else will come in and take its place. It’s for this reason the greatest command is “to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength” (Mark 12:30). In other words, love Him with your entire self. We are living in a world that majors in distraction. We cannot move forward without recognizing this reality. Once we love, we have to choose to constantly and continually love. We must feed the flame.

I want to leave you with this charge before we go. In a time when decisions can be incredibly challenging to make, finding ways to filter out the unnecessary can be quite helpful. “Is this honoring to you, Lord? Will this bring me closer to you, or not?” Asking this question is a practice I want to commit to with you. There was a season when this was central to my decision-making process and the fruit that was produced was astonishing.

We fall in love over the course of many, many decisions made over an extended amount of time. Using this question as a filter will be exceedingly helpful to keep your heart oriented towards where you’re wanting to go with the Lord. Choose the honoring thing with your next choice, then do it again, and a moment will come, by the grace of the Lord, where your heart will be much closer to Him than when you first began.