Addicted to Love: You are what you Love.

What do you want?

John 1:38 “Jesus turned and saw them following and said to them, “What are you seeking?” And they said to him, “Rabbi” (which means Teacher), “where are you staying?””

What do you want? This question is the question that is burried under all of the other questions that Jesus ask of us.

“Will you follow me?” is another varriant of this question as is the fudamental question Jesus as of Peter, “Do you Love me?” John 21:16 “He said to him a second time, “Simon, son of John, do you love me?” He said to him, “Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.” He said to him, “Tend my sheep.””

When Jesus encountered his disciples in John 1 he never asked them or even us... “What do you know?” or even “What do you believe?”

Jesus ask us, “What do you want?”

This question cuts into the pretense of everything we are as people… Jesus knew a truth about us, “We are what we love.”

Our wants, desires, longings are at the core of what defines us as humans. IN fact, the Scripture speaks of protecting our hearts...

Proverbs 4:23 “Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life.”

To be a follower of Jesus, to grow into maturity is to pastor your own hearts being careful and attentive of what you love.

In our churches we have moved from “You are what you love, to you are what you think.”

Modern Definition of Discipleship

Transfer of knowledge from God’s word into our minds, but this does not address the habitual.

Defining a “Disciple” as a learner who is aquiring more information about God through Scriptures only represents an incomplete picutre.

I mean, we’re told to focus on these things right?

2 Cor. 10:5 “We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ,”

Romans 12:2 “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.”

Ps 1:2 “but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night.”

Right, If we are serious about following Jesus we will be at every service, every small group, every bible study, every event, reading day in and day out, completely devoted to God.

We start to conivnce ourselves that we can “Think” our way to holiness. / This is not Sanctification by information transfer.

“I think therefore I am?” Rene’ Descartes

A Disciples Delima

Do you ever experience a gap between what you “know” and what you “do?”

If we are all honest, we’ve all been inspired by a sermon, speach, or story that pulls at our deepest. convictions and we make a pact with ourselves that everything will be different moving foward. But, by Tuesday evening we’ve already failed and broken promises to ourselves.

You hunger for Christ, you thirst for more knowledge, you want to be like Jesus… but somehow all the knoweldge that we amass somehow doesn’t translate into our actual way of life.

Life isn’t simply “mind over matter.”

Why do we still struggle even through week in and week out we read Scripture and attend meetings to learn more?

Talk with any person who has attended a recover meeting for adiction and you’ll soon hear that their “best thinking” got them there.

I’m not advocating the “if it feels good, it must be good” philosophy of life. But, if just aquiring more knowledge was all there was… why don’t more of us expereince victory over the things that weigh us down?

“To recognize the limits of knowledge isn’t to embrace ignorance. We don’t need less knowledge, we need more.” - James K.A. Smith

Paul’s Prayer:

Phil 1:9-11 “And it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment, so that you may approve what is excellent, and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God.”

At first we are tempted to see Paul as praying for more knowledge…and that knowledge leads to knowing what to love. But, look again.

It’s the inverse: Paul is praying that their “Love would abound MORE and MORE.”

In some sense, LOVE becomes the condition of knowledge. It’s not that I know in order to love, but rather: I love in order to know.

If we are going to discern what is best, excllent, what really matters… what is of utmost importance..

Paul says the place to start is by shepherding our loves.

Saint Augustine in his work titled “Confessions” pens this phrase.

“You have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rest in you.” - Saint Augustine

We are moade for something..

We are my “by” and “for” the Creator, Jesus Christ.

See, to be fully human is to “find” yourself in relationship with the one whom you were made for.

Another Church father, Irenaeus, put it this way, “The gloy of God is a human fully alive.”

“The glory of God is a human fully alive.” - Irenaeus

To be human is rooted in a relationship with Christ, but our existence is dynamic! We are created for something… moving towards something.. to be pushing and persuing.

I know some love the sappy movies on the Halmark channel, but these ideas have ruined the biblical idea of what Love really is.

Agustine doesn’t frame who we are as people as just an intellectual quest of, “You made us to know you…and our minds are ignorant until they understand you”

The heart is a fulcrum of your most fundamental longings. - Author

Ps 42:1-2 “As a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and appear before God?”

Our heart represents our love, and our “loves” orient us towards action.

I used to tell my wife, “If you want something bad enough in life, you’ll persue it”.

Jenn wanted to be a photographer, but lacked the knowledge of how to professionally capture peoples memories and events. I watched my wife from a longing and desire to create persue the knowledge of photography.

She didn’t have the know and then did photography… she had a desire to do and then persued the “know.”

In the Greek New Testament Scripture, most people who have been in church know there are three words for Love, but there are really only two used in the New Testament Scripture

Two Root Greek Words for Love in New Testament:

agapē - love, charity, dear, charitably, feast of charity

phileō (philadelphia) - love, brotherly love, brotherly kindness, love of the brethren

Other Greek Words for Love:

Astorgos- without love, devoid of affection, without affection to kindred, hard-hearted, unfeeling,

Eros - Greek word for sensual or romantic love

In our culture, the idea of passionate love has become perverted and in our churches we have focused on love as sacrifical at best and mere sentiment at worst.

But, here’s the deal… It’s often our desires that propell us towards.

So, what do you want?

Augustine had another insight.. rooting in 1 John 4:19 “We love because he first loved us.”

“Because we are made to love the one who made us and loves us, - we will find rest when our loves are rightly ordered towards this ultimate end.

The alternative.

Since our hearts are made to find their end in God, we will exerperience an anxiety and restlessness when we try love substitutes.

To be human is to have a heart

You Can’t Not Love...

The question isn’t whether you will love something as “ultimate.”

The question is will you love what is ultimate.

So, what do you love?