Our Response

As we consider our tragic state - and God's loving response to our problems - there are a few different postures we might have as we enter First Love.

One is to despair: Given how lost we are, how can we ever know God? Maybe you've been feeling God's absence for a long time. Maybe you once loved God, but now you're not sure. I hope that what you've heard today has given you some hope. To have confidence that God knows your heart, that God loves you, and that God has provided and will provide all that you need to know him.

Another option is to attempt mastery. Whenever we take a course, we want to learn as much as we can. And that's good! The challenge is if we think we can achieve mastery in THIS subject. In knowing God, all of us have to confess that we are beginners. We are amateurs. We are just getting started. And our knowledge of God isn't supposed to be theoretical, but experiential. We aren't studying an ant but growing in love with our Creator — who is our Savior — who is our First Love!

The theologian Fred Sanders explains the risk like this:

When finite minds come to encounter the infinite God, we run the risk of adding God to the catalog of items we are interested in studying, or acquiring, or reaping some benefits from. Especially when the issue is the blessing of salvation, the danger is great that the finite mind will treat God and his blessings as enhancements to be added to our lives. The only way to escape this tendency is to be drawn out of ourselves into the bewilderingly large and complex gospel of God.

So instead of providing mastery, I hope that each week you will feel a bit bewildered. Perplexed and confused. Because we will be studying God - and so there will always be something about God that goes beyond our ability to grasp or understand.

But there's a better option: to choose the virtues of humility, worship, and awe.

Humility… because the subject is God, I've had to come to terms with the fact that, though I am the teacher, I woefully cannot fully explain God to you!!

I have found comfort, however, in J.I. Packer's admission. At the start of his legendary book Knowing God, he confesses, "I do not ask my readers to suppose that I know very well what I am talking about."

However, we don't want to stay in a place of confusion. As we learn what we can learn about God, we want to turn that knowledge into worship and awe.

J.I. Packer advises this habit:

How can we turn our knowledge about God into knowledge of God? The rule for doing this is simple but demanding. It is that we turn each truth that we learn about God into matter for meditation before God, leading to prayer and praise to God.