Do You Love the Savior?

I never had the privilege of meeting Dr. John Mitchell, founder of Multnomah Biblical Seminary (then Multnomah School of the Bible).  He died in 1990, at 98 years of age.  His most famous quote is engraved on a plaque in the library: “Don’t you folks ever read your Bibles?”  He was famous for that.  But his lesser known quote that he said just as often was, “Do you love the Savior?”  Just that.  So simple.  “Do you love the Savior?”  And I’ve been thinking about this lately.  Jeff and I are always talking about the best way to influence people for Christ.  And this week, as I listened to the John Piper message (posted in LiveDifferent 3), I realized what is missing from so many of our pulpits and lives:  Love for the Savior.  Oh I know that we want to live for God. We want to serve Him.  We want to be good people. We want to be His hands and feet.  We want to love others, see families reconciled, see people come to Christ.  But do we love the Savior?  Do I love the Savior?  Do you love the Savior?

I remember a while back visiting a church and hearing a great message.  It was creative, funny, and easy to listen to.  It was a really creative way to help people understand how to respond better to situations where they might feel stressed or negative.  But after I left, I couldn’t shake this nagging feeling I had.  What was wrong? I enjoyed listening to the message, and even took to heart a few things, thinking through how I could apply the principles and respond better in situations.  But later that day I realized what had been bugging me–It wasn’t about Jesus!  I never opened my Bible!  I wasn’t drawn to the feet of my Savior.  I wasn’t drawn to fall on my face before my Lord and confess my love for Him.  Principles are good.  Biblical principles are good.  Godly principles are good.  But you know that?  They’re not Christ.  They’re not what’s real.  They might help us to be good people, help us to resolve conflict better, help us to respond better to life’s challenges, but they’ll never make us fall in love with the Savior.  Without a complete, wholehearted, reckless adoration for Christ those principles are no more potent than the Seven Steps of Highly Effective People.  Great for making friends and influencing people, but they won’t draw us into the Holy of Holies, they won’t create in us a hunger for the presence of God.  Do we love the Savior?

I’ve mentioned before that I love looking to see what people write under “religion” on their Facebook profile.  I noticed that my brother’s says “Christ Adorer.”  When I saw that I just stared at it for a second. Christ Adorer.  Is that my religion?  Do I adore Christ.  Seriously.  Let’s be honest.  What are things that I adore.  Well, I adore my son, that’s for sure. I could talk about him for hours. I love to post pictures of him and videos and anything else that will somehow communicate with other people how cool he is.  I adore my husband.  And sometimes I adore some pretty simple things like mango with sticky rice or sweet iced tea on a hot day.  Do I adore Christ?  Now to be real here, it’s tough because I’ve never actually seen Christ.  I’ve never been able to put my arms around him. I can’t smell him or feel his arms around me. I don’t know the sound of his voice.  But my spirit does. And when I’m with Him, I do adore Him. I am intoxicated by His presence.  I love Jesus.  And that is the goal of our Christian life–to adore Christ with ever increasing measure, until the day our love is make complete in His presence in glory. 

But if all that we do is talk about biblical principles, how will people ever see and savor the beauty of Christ?  How will they be motivated to live those principles if they won’t adore the Savior?  And even if we are motivated to live that way, is that the reason we’re here?  Is our goal in life to have a good marriage, a good job, and to live a good way?  That’s hopefully a byproduct, but our goal is Christ! Our goal is to love and adore the Savior!  ANd if He is not truly beautiful and captivating to us, I am venturing to say that something is wrong.  And yes, our love waxes and wanes.  Our emotions grow cold.  We experience deserts, wildnernesses.  But if our default experience, our normal, most common experience is a Christian life that is centered on living biblical principles and not on seeking and savoring the glory of Christ, we’ve missed the boat. I’ve missed the boat. 

So I think I’m landing with the conclusion that my goal in life is not just to love people, not just to give my life for ministry, not just to see people made whole–it is first and foremost to seek God with all my heart, to seek Him for His sake, to see His beauty, to worship Him in His splendor.  As John Piper says, “When people are caught up in the heavenly sphere, caught up in the beauty and glory of God, they’ll do diapers differently!”  I’m all about the earthly action–I think my whole LiveDifferent challenge shows this loud and clear.  But if at the bottom of it all we aren’t Christ Adorers, then lay aside the LiveDifferent and first and foremost seek Christ. 

Do you love the Savior? I pray you do. I pray that I will more and more.  Let’s pray for a people whose hearts are truly set ablaze with love for Him.  Amen?