Walking the path

(3-minute read)

In my early 20s, one of my first bosses, Richard, confided in me over lunch that he was having trouble at home. “I don’t understand my wife. I give her everything, yet she says I don’t love her. She didn’t like where we lived, so I bought her a new house. There was a problem with the dishwasher, so I bought her a new dishwasher. No matter what I do, she’s still not happy. I like to stop at a bar on the way home and have a few drinks with the guys, and as soon as I walk into the house, she gets all upset. Says we don’t communicate, but we talk all the time. We spent 15 minutes the other night just talking about the kid’s school. I don’t know what’s wrong with her. What does she want?”

At the time, I had never been married, and the thought of becoming the family’s provider seemed a little overwhelming. I didn’t know what to say to him, and I think I offered something profound like, “That’s tough, Richard. I hope it all works out.”

Learning to live in a relationship can be difficult. I can get it wrong even when I desperately try to do everything right. When I got married, my relationship with my wife taught me that.

As a kid, I was taught that God wanted me to obey his rules and that if I didn’t, I’d be punished. I reasoned that being God, he had a right to require that. In my mid-20s, a neighbor, Tom Waters, told me about how God sent his son Jesus to die for my sins so that I wouldn’t be punished for all the wrong I had done. He told me God wanted to have a relationship with me, and all I had to do was accept Jesus and all he had done for me. I received Jesus as my Lord and Savior, and my life changed. I started going to church for every meeting, which was at least three times a week. I shared my faith with people I met, tithed, studied my Bible every day, and went to home Bible studies and prayer meetings.

Legalism is trying to follow all the rules to have a relationship with God. After I had accepted Jesus, without realizing it, I had changed to (for lack of a better word) faith-legalism. Church, Bible study, and all those activities were good things. Those good things are like the house and appliances of this new life and are extremely useful. But, like my old boss, Richard, found out, they are incredibly beneficial but don’t make a relationship. God didn’t create the universe and have his son come and die just to get me to memorize a few lines of theology.

Jesus taught us that our relationship should be more like that of a husband and wife. God loves me, and he wants me to love him. People at church talked a lot about loving the Lord. They even sang songs about it. I wanted to love the Lord. I even sang those songs. When I first received the Lord, I felt tremendous gratitude. I immensely liked the Lord but would not have called it love.

Love came slowly and involved a lot of conversations that did not include “God help me” or “God give me.” Like my wife, God wants a shared life with shared experience. Some of the best times were when I was walking along, feeling the Lord’s presence with me, and seeing someone in need so I could physically act for both me and the Lord. It was like we were doing it together. I began to know the Lord more fully through a joined life and shared experience. Slowly, over time, our friendship became love, and it continues to grow.