Conveying the flame of God

“Oh how He loves you and me! He gave His life, how much more could He give? Oh, how He loves you and me!”
It is quite possible that you have sung these words… Oh… about a thousand times now, depending on your age and the types of songs used in your church. Have you actually thought about those words that you are singing? These days, it seems like churches all too willingly forget about the passion that God has over each and every member of their congregations. It’s more like we get together to say have ourselves one hour to try to “figure out” what God is saying to us. Don’t get me wrong here, it is good to know what more the passage has to offer to our life as a Christian, but please, please, don’t boil it down to maxims and dogmatically loaded phrases. It is much better that the Bible passages say what they say than to intellectualize them to a pulp. This is the same problem that the prophets had getting the people to listen to them. Here they are, extreme examples of what God wanted from His people, in plain black and white, yet the people of Israel, would ignore the words of the prophet until the time that the prophets words were fulfilled. Then the Israelites would think back and remember the words that God had said through the prophets.
My prayer is that we would consistently remember to thank God, first simply for Who He is, secondly for what He does, and thirdly, for what He allows us to do with our lives: IN THAT ORDER, not the other way around. God simply wants us to partner with Him as he enacts His will in the world. His primary aim is not for us to tell Him how great the things He does are, but that we would love him for who He is.