The first question Jesus asks, according to the Gospel of John, is: “What do you seek?” (1:38). What do you want? One of the last questions (third to the last) Jesus asks, according to the Gospel of John, is found in 21:17: “Do you love Me?” In-between those two questions, Jesus spends His life tying the answer of the latter into line with the sentiments of the former: What do you seek? Do you love Me?
James Smith has written a book recently titled You Are What You Love: The Spiritual Power of Habit. His focus in the book is trying to reorient the reader’s lives away from loving things in the world to loving things that are of God.
We are what we desire, thus the connection between Smith’s title and his subtitle. You and I are defined by what makes us happy, by what we desire. You are what you love. How do you feel about that? How do your loves, your habits characterize you? How do they define you?
Paul wrote to the Christians in Philippi: “this I pray, that your love may abound still more and more in real knowledge and all discernment, so that you may approve the things that are excellent, in order to be sincere and blameless until the day of Christ; having been filled with the fruit of righteousness which comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God” (1:9-11).
What is the essence of Paul’s prayer? Read the text again. Paul is praying that the Philippians will abound in love. Love! That their loves, their desires, their wants will be informed by, framed by their knowledge and their discernment.
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If we have come to love Jesus, then our wants are folded into His wants and His desires. We were created to want God (Ecc. 12:13). That relationship, of course, is mediated by His Son, Jesus Christ. So it is that we learn how to be a human, as God intended, by imitating the life of Jesus. Our lives are not static; they are dynamic. We are moving, we ought to be moving, in the direction of being more Christ-like.
A key theme that runs through Smith’s book is that worship helps reorient our love back to focusing on God. Smith writes on worship: “Worship works from the top down, you might say. In worship we don’t just come to show God our devotion and give him our praise; we are called to worship because in this encounter God (re)makes and molds us top-down. …Worship is the heart of discipleship because it is the gymnasium in which God retrains our hearts” (pg. 77).
I think that is an accurate evaluation of worship, something for worship leaders and preachers to keep in mind. It also suggests why God put His Word at the focus of our worship, including our song service: “Let the word of Christ richly dwell within you, with all wisdom teaching and admonishing one another with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with thankfulness in your hearts to God” (Col. 3:16).
If God is our want. Do you love Jesus?
