Falling for God: 7 Ways to do Crazy Love ~ Holy Experience

... humble thanks to Bloom Book Club for the invite to guest blog for the bookclub gathering for chapter six of Crazy Love: Overwhelmed by a Relentless God: "When you fall in Love" -- this quiet community warmly welcomes the Bloom Community !

Girl, if you say that boy's name one more time, I'm opening this door up and flinging myself out into the deserts of Utah," Grandma slaps her knee and I shrink down, seat belt digging into ribs.

Utah with her rouge painted wrinkles, her blush-brushed crags, blurs by at 60 miles an hour. Another mile marker flashes and I bite my tongue. I won't say it out loud, how many more miles home to that boy and those eyes, but there's no stopping a heart from keeping tally.

"You want me to slow down before you jump or you just leaping without warning?" Dad chuckles, one hand wheeling that wheel.

"I think I'm just leaping, Son." Grandma shakes her head. "Did you ever in your life know a girl so love sick, Lloyd?" Grandma swats Grandpa's shoulder, gets his attention.

"Ten days, thousands of miles criss-crossing the States, hitting every photo op you can imagine, and all she goes on about is The Boy this, and The Boy that. He's all she can think of! I've heard so much of that Boy, I wished we had just packed him!" My cheeks burn redder than Utah's cliffs and Grandpa winks, elbows my snickering kid brother in the ribs and they howl, coyotes on a ridge.

Mile 368. If Grandma but knew how that grin of his could wind a girl in and spin her out, let her go all a dizzy swirl. I'm counting miles back to that smile.

"You sure are in love, girl." She pats my knee.

First love's an immersion and passion shapes all vowels into the kiss of that name.

Grandma cried the day That Boy slipped the ring on. I was giddier than Grandpa and kid brother had ever been. And G.K. Chesterton, he wrote words I think on long:

"Let your religion be less of a theory and more of a love affair."

A love affair.

A wild affair that ravages the mind, all thoughts captive to the Love, this all-consuming romance that leaves you starved for that touch, hungry for His voice, famished for more of His being that makes the being all real.

Love is the only real reality and what is loved shapes all reality. The books on the night table, the flicker on the blue screens, the words on the lips, the commitments on the calendar. The god or The God on the mind... that has us on our knees.

Whatever is loved, it seizes the heart, seizes the mind... seizes the life blood of the life.

Francis Chan gently nudges in chapter six of Crazy Love: Overwhelmed by a Relentless God,

Paul writes, "The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love" (Gal. 5:6).

Is loving God -- and by extension, loving people-- what you are about? Is it what being a Christian means to you? Do you live as though faith, demonstrated through love, really is the only thing that counts?

Love-Faith: that's the only thing that counts. The only thing that God's tallying is faith written not on church marquees or framed plaques, but faith written in the language of love. In God's math, everything else is a zero. The only thing that adds is love. Love for Him, for His people. Who writes that kind of passion vocabulary with the consonants of their days?

I yearn, and don't yearn enough, to fall for God. How do I return to First Love?

Falling for God

Love is a function of proximity

We're most likely to fall for someone we brush up against everyday. The closer our proximity to someone, the more likely the passion.

Thus the more ways I can keep company with God, stay close to Soul-Lover, braid my hours to His heart, the more likely I am to be captivated.

Ways to wake to the close proximity of God:

1. Build a House of Prayer: with an established place to pray, prayer bench, and with established times to meet God in prayer, hourly dates we anticipate, the chiming of the clock calling us to communion...

2. Dinner Dates: Savor Real Bread at every meal. Whenever plates are all licked clean, we serve a round of soul honey, Sweet Savior in Sweet Scripture.

3. Memorize His Love: as the courted re-read love letters, we memorize His I-Will-Die-for-You words... letting them whisper sweet everythings to the soul cochlear a thousand times a day

4. Sing love songs: Listening to the hymn of His heart in the old verses of song, in contemporary choruses, in the Psalms, sung as we work, at the close of the meals, when the chaos quakes the windows and we need to gather back into Love

Love is a function of passion

There's chemistry between us and God; the world's charged with Him, our every heartbeat. We need awake to His wooing.

5. Wake to His Caresses: Are you too experiencing the passion daily ?

6. Say yes to the love : God speaks into our dailies, pursuing. I'm only discovering, learning to say yes.

Love is a function of a Person

Crazy Love for God isn't forced, a daily arduous effort of an arranged, estranged, marriage. Loving God isn't another task we need to run around doing.

7. Love Himself gives of Himself so that we can love. We need not do it on our own strength.

Chan writes in Crazy Love: Overwhelmed by a Relentless God,

"[R]unning is exhausting -- if, that is, we are running from sin or guilt, out of fear. However if we train ourselves to run toward our refuge, toward Love, we are free..."

Crazy Love for God isn't achieved by effort. It's achieved by falling for God; We fall into crazy love with God when we surrender. When we fall for God, we are falling into a Person's arms. There we rest, knowing if we but fall into all of Him, He will change us.

And yet resting in Christ does not mean doing less for Christ. Resting in Christ is not the same as simply resting; it is not inactive, apathetic. In Christ, to rest means to run. In Christ, rest means to pursue love, to ardently run towards the arms we long for.

"When we are focused on loving Christ, it doesn't mean we do less... when we truly love Christ, our work is a manifestation of that love and it feels like love."

~Chan, Crazy Love

That: In Christ, work, it feels like love. Like love.

When love fires our days, our work is abandon, utter rest. Love is rest. That's why we fall into it. (And we do not work to earn love, but we work because we love.)

Christ-Love is the super fuel. And we run and do not grow weary. Passion fires vision and Joy kindles hands and our souls rest in a firebed of love.

I sleep tonight by that first love, that boy-now-man with name I couldn't speak enough, and the miles I counted have led home to those arms, and here I lie, our bodies warm, breath mingling.

And my soul's wants to count too, the only thing worth counting: a faith expressed in love.

There are Arms waiting for me to fall.

'I came by again and saw you, saw that you were ready for love and a lover. I took care of you, dressed you and protected you. I promised you my love and entered the covenant of marriage with you. I, God, the Master, gave my word. You became mine." ~ Ez. 16:8 MSG

"You have forsaken your first love. Remember the height from which you have fallen! Repent and do the things you did at first." ~Rev. 2:4-5 NIV

:::

Have you joined the passionate faith community of The Bloom Book Club, hosted by Angie of Bring the Rain and Jessica of The Mom Creative? This community of women love Jesus and they have fed me His bread. Currently, we are studying chapter six of Francis Chan's Crazy Love and discussing in community.

Join us for Discussion Touch Points at the Bloom community?

How could your faith today not be about works or theory, but an intimate Love Affair?

How are you falling deeper in love with God everyday --- or falling out of love?

How do you find rest in Christ in a racing world?

How might falling in love with God be the gentle kiss of resuscitation to your weariness?

:::

button code

Every Wednesday, we Walk with Him, posting a spiritual practice that draws us nearer to His heart.

To read the entire series of spiritual practices

Next Week: Consider sharing in community, "How do you Keep Company with Jesus throughout the Day?"

Today, if you'd like to share with the community How to Rest ... just quietly slip in the direct URL to your exact post..... If you join us, we humbly ask that you please help us find each other by sharing the community's graphic within your post.