“I love the Lord, for he heard my voice; he heard my cry for mercy.” Psalm 116:1
Last post (on being a man of faith), we mentioned that it is faith that enlivens are duties. Without faith, our roles as Christians are difficult impossible to fulfill. But just as faith brings life to our daily walk, so love towards Christ sweetens it. A godly man is sick with love towards Him. Brother Lawrence wrote in one of his books on being with God the following:
I have had such delicious thoughts of the Lord that I’m ashamed to mention them.
Wow. That is love towards Jesus. God is the source and meaning of goodness. His beauty and sweetness arrest our hearts with love. God is the saint’s portion (Psalm 119:57). And what is more loved than a portion? “I would hate my own soul,” says Augustine, “if I found it not loving God.” A godly man loves God and therefore delights to be in his presence; he loves God and therefore takes comfort in nothing without him.
The godly person yearns for Christ, and thirsts for Him as a deer panteth for the water. As Matt Chandler has mentined before, this is not a verse meant to be put on a coffee mug with Bambi drinking from a puddle. This is an honest and brutal yearning after Christ with all that we are. Godly men weep when they are distant from Jesus. When the soul sees God clearly, it would gladly be with God. A gracious heart cries out, “O that I had wings, that I might fly away, and be with my love, Christ!” The bird desires to be out of the cage, though it is hung with pearl.
A godly man loves God, though he is tested, tempted, and tried. A mother and her nine-year-old child were about to die of hunger. The child looked at its mother and said, “Mother, do you think God will starve us?” “No, child,” said the mother, “he will not.” The child replied, “But if (my note: not if, but when) he does, we must love him, and serve him.”
Let us test our godliness by this measurement: Do we love God? Is he our treasure and center? Can we, with David, call God our “joy”, yes, our “exceeding joy” (Psalm 43:4)? Do we delight in drawing near to him, and “come before his presence with singing”? (Psalm 100:2) Do we love him for his beauty more than his jewels? Do we seek gifts above Giver? Do we love him, when he seems not to love us?
If this be the sign of a godly man, how few will be found in the number! Where is the man whose heart is dilated in love to God? Many court him—but few love him. People are for the most part eaten up with self-love; they love their ease, their worldly profit, their lusts—but they do not have a drop of love to God. If they loved God, would they be so willing to be rid of him? “They say unto God, Depart from us” (Job 21:14). If they loved God, would they tear his name by their oaths? Does he who shoots his Father in the heart, love him? Though they worship God, they do not love him; they are like the soldiers who bowed the knee to Christ, and mocked him (Matt. 27:29).
Godly men love Jesus.