"God is love. Crazy, relentless, all-powerful love..."

When I read these first words vertically laid out across the back flap of the new book I brought home, more than my interest was peaked. I felt a tinge of something deep inside my soul that fluttered.....I almost felt like one of Pavlov's dogs salivating from the mouth when food was presented before them.  Ha! It was physiological. I knew I needed to read it. It spoke truth to my heart. And it quickened my spirit. Do you ever find a book like that?

I knew I'd been in a valley for a while. Not quite satified with where I was with God. Feeling like there should be something more. Knowing that there was something more. I haven't talked about it very much. But it's there.

Being in the valley doesn't keep me from talking to God, or going to church, or singing those awesome worship songs on Sunday mornings, or even reading the Bible. But I know better. Really knowing God takes more  than that.

Maybe I'm going out on a limb here, but do you ever feel like you need to "force-feed" yourself? You don't feel like going through the motions, but you do it because you know it's what you should do. You know that even though you don't feel God's presence, He's there. And you want to do whatever you can to keep that connection. I lift up prayer needs of others, listen to friend's struggles with an open heart and mind, continue to serve in various capacities. But, something is still missing. It just doesn't seem like enough. I feel like there has to be something more than this.

It hit me like a ton of bricks when I opened to the first page of the Preface...

"We all know something's wrong. At first I thought it was just me. Then I stood before twenty thousand Christian college students and asked, "How many of you have read the New Testament and wondered if we in the church are missing it? When almost every hand went up, I felt comforted. At least I'm not crazy."

Okay, that means I must not be crazy either, right?

 "It's crazy, if you think about it. The God of the universe -- the Creator of nitrogen and pine needles, galaxies and E-minor --- loves us with a radical, unconditional, self-sacrificing love. And what is our typical response? We go to church, sing songs, and try not to cuss. Whether you've verbalized it yet or not...we all know somethings's wrong. Does something deep inside your heart long to break free from the status quo?  Yes. Are you hungry for an authentic faith that addresses the problems of our world with tangible, even radical, solution? Yes! Yes! God is calling you to a passionate love relationship with Himself. So that's what it is? How have I been missing it? " (emphasis all mine)

It's not as if there's no need around here staring us in the face. We see it everywhere we go. Just on my street alone, I think the other night on my walk about the widowed man living with a his practically non-existent, promiscuous teenage daughter....they pass eachother like ships in the night as he lives out the reality of being alone and she's looking for love in all the wrong places. (Been there. Done that myself.) A young couple with a toddler up on the hill....we can hear them from our house in the evening hours screaming and cussing at one another. The elderly couple on the corner...a retired pastor, blind, and dutifully working in his yard a few times a week....he waves when we go by even though we've never met. The homosexual couple who's lives appear to revolve around the walking schedule of their dogs. The man and woman next door who we only see when they come out to mow the yard...his little girl comes to visit them a couple times a month. The divorced woman on the other side of us  --  she puts an unbelieveable amount of time into her perfectly manicured yard. The woman living with her boyfriend and her four children fathered by four different men....she claims they are all on medication for depression and schizophrenia. The empty house in foreclosure.

I think I covered everyone on just our street.

It's so sad........Is there not enough need in the world? We all have it. We all know someone who experiences it. We see it in extreme all over the world. Jesus said, "The poor you will always have with you," (Matt. 26:11) Who am I to passively think that there's nothing I can do to make a difference?

Francis writes, "God is calling you to a passionate love relationship with Himself. Because the answer to religious complacency isn't working harder at a list of do's and don'ts -- it's falling in love with God. And once you encounter His love, you will never be the same."

So when I really fall in love with God, I can learn to love all these people and situations the same way.  Okay....  I think moving beyond talk is the challenge here. God is seemingly giving me the desire of my heart as I speak. 

I illustrated it to my kids like this: What if we compared a life in Christ to a ball game....any ball game. We could go to the game and sit in the bleachers and just keep being a spectator. It'd be fun to watch for a while. But sooner or later, we would probably realize that the game would be a whole lot  more fun if we we were actually in it playing, ya know? With a life in Christ Jesus, we should come to The Game with more in mind than being a pinch hitter or bench warmer or even part of the group sitting on the bleachers. Maybe we can actually be a player and make a difference to the home team!

In this scenerio, Francis would call those on the sidelines, "lukewarm, halfhearted, or stagnant Christians". He would say that they have an "inaccurate view of God" who we assume is "satified when people manage to fit Him into their lives in some small way."....maybe by just going to church and singing those songs.  God wants us to get in the game. He wants us to be an actual, contributing player.

So what have I learned so far from this Crazy Love book?

I want to learn to take the old truths of the Word and apply them to my heart and life in a fresh new way.

I want to have a crazy love for Jesus.

Listen to this....

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. If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him? Dear children, let us love not love with words or tongue
 but with actions and in truth.

1 John 3:16-18