“Lord, we want more of you in our lives.”
It’s a prayer I’ve heard many times and have uttered more than a few times myself. It usually precedes a time of gathered worship as a congregation enters into a time of passionate singing. But a version of it is also a feature of many private prayers where a desire for an encounter with God and a feeling of closeness to him is front and center.
It’s a good desire, for it turns the heart and mind toward God. And it addresses the times when we drift away from God.
There are times when our affections get deflated and our hearts wander from God. As the old hymn puts, “Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it/Prone to leave the God I love.” And so it’s appropriate to call ourselves back to loving God.
But it’s not more passion for God that we need if we’re to experience more of him. It’s actually a greater love for our brothers and sisters in Christ.
Here’s how one of the last-written books of the Bible puts it:
No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us (1 John 4:12).
According to John, there’s one and only one way to guarantee that God lives in us and completes his love in us. It’s when we love one another. That’s it.
John has already told us a few verses earlier that loving one another is the test we take to determine if we even know God at all.
Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love (1 John 4:7-8).
No love = No God
Know love = Know God
When John gets to the end of writing his first letter, he drops a surprise conclusion: “Dear children, keep yourselves from idols” (1 John 5:21). It’s a surprise because John hasn’t mentioned idolatry even once in his letter. To many, the final line is a head-scratcher.
But John has already explained himself. Loving our brothers and sisters is the test both of closeness to God and knowledge of God.
Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen. And he has given us this command: Anyone who loves God must also love their brother and sister (1 John 4:20-21).
If we don’t love, we don’t know God. In fact, the love we claim to have for God is a lie. It’s empty, false.
But what about all of those deep feelings we have for God expressed in worship and personal prayer?
John calls those idolatry. Yep, idolatry.
If we don’t know God (proved by our lack of love for our brothers and sisters), then the “God” we think we’re worshiping isn’t God at all. It’s a false God, an idol.
If God is so devoted to loving us that John can write that God “is” love, then we miss out on the heart of God when we don’t love. We merely like our image of God, not who God really is. It’s like being infatuated with a beautiful woman but being completely uninterested in knowing her heart and mind. A man who marries purely for outward appearances is said to have a trophy bride.
John tells us lacking love leaves us with a trophy God, a God who is pretty and makes us feel good but who has no substance, an idol.
This is what I believe Jesus is getting at near the end of the Sermon on the Mount:
“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?’ Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’” (Matt. 5:21-23).
Working for God is good. Worshiping God is good. But if we do these things without loving one another, which is the core commandment God has given us (see 1 John 4:21 above), then we don’t know God and God doesn’t know us.
Any movement toward God must always be accompanied by a movement toward our brothers and sisters. If it’s not a movement toward our brothers and sisters, it’s a movement toward an idol.
If this is true, and I believe it is, it should shape the content of our worship.
We sing numerous songs about loving God and almost none about loving one another. I know that doesn’t sound worshipful, but if it’s at the heart of who God is, then it’s definitely worshipful.
The fourth verse of “All Creatures of Our God and King” begins like this:
And all ye men of tender heart,
Forgiving others, take your part,
O praise Him! Alleluia!
Forgiveness here is a part of worship. Loving one another through reconciliation is at the heart of who God is and yet this is the only verse of a song I know that ties worship and forgiveness together. And we have to wait till the fourth verse to get to it!
Why don’t we have more songs and verses of songs like this? Because it’s hard to love our brothers and sisters.
It’s much easier to love a nice, safe little God who doesn’t concern himself with how poorly we love our brothers and sisters. It’s much easier to sing feel-good songs about how much we love God while never dealing with the bitterness in our hearts toward a brother over here and our lack of generosity toward a sister over there.
We say we want to be closer to God, but the “God” we’re worshiping might not be God at all. If we want to love God in truth, we must love one another in truth.
God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them (1 John 4:16).
What an image! A mutual indwelling, where we are in God and God is in us. You simply can’t get any closer than that.
There’s only one way to get there: Live in love.
And what does that look like?
This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters (1 John 3:16).
Our worship and praying should always begin with gratitude to Jesus for laying down his life for us. And it should always lead us to laying down our lives for one another.
A pastor friend told me about the chaos caused in his congregation when it was discovered that one of their long-time worship leaders had been unfaithful to his wife over many years. He had expressed happy feelings toward God in song for years while actively not-loving his wife. As we reflected on it, we wondered if this man is even a Christian.
Was it God he’d been worshiping all those years? Or was it just an idol who went by the name of Jesus but which never called him to live like Jesus.
This is how love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment: In this world we are like Jesus (1 John 4:17). Being like Jesus in this passage doesn’t mean being perfect. It means laying down our lives in love.
Recently, I made a massive mistake which only wife was able to take care of and only at great cost to herself. I had forgotten the passports for a trip my youngest son and I were taking, but we were too far from home to retrieve them. The only way we could get them and go on our trip was if my wife got up very early the next morning and did a six-hour round-trip drive (including going over a mountain range) to get the passports to someone who would be traveling to where my son and I were at.
It wasn’t pleasant for her, but she did the trip. She laid down her life for me. She loved me. And even though she may not have felt super close to God, she was. As she was doing that for me, taking the consequences of my failure of herself, she was like Jesus. She was living in God and God was living in her.
If we want more of God, this is how we get it: Not by singing louder but by loving one another.