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All You've Got to Give

The other day I visited an old friend. He was a widower of several years who was experiencing poor health. I hadn’t seen him for a very long time so I phoned him, got directions to his new home and went to see him. I buzzed his unit from the lobby and he invited me come on up. I took the elevator to the appropriate floor, got off and walked down to the door with his number on it. I tapped and the door opened to a big surprise.

He hadn’t told me that he had acquired a new wife since I had last seen him. I wasn’t in the apartment for more than thirty seconds and I could feel the love in the air. It was really unique. I have experienced this a few times when love between to people is virtually palpable; you can sense it even as a third party. This was certainly the case on this occasion.

As I watched how tenderly they doted on each other, I couldn’t help but remark to my friend when his new wife was out of the room that he was really spoiled. He looked at me with real earnestness in his eyes and said, “I’ve never had it so good.”

I thought about that for a few minutes, I had known his first wife but, I’d never sensed the love between them that I sensed between him and his new wife. I thought about that. I thought about the difference between all out, unreserved love and love with reservations.

Many of us, in both our relationship with God and in our human relationships, put reservations on our love. We choose to hold back part of ourselves which we are unwilling to share or which we feel would not be accepted. We decide as we go in that we will risk giving some parts of ourselves and other parts we’ll withhold. This “love” is adequate for some people. They would be glad to have it. But the love that really stands out to me is the love which is totally selfless. Totally giving. Totally vulnerable.

Of course we can’t do everything that the other person wants or needs, even God recognizes our human frailty. But there is a huge difference between going into a relationship saying, “I will give you all I can” and going into one with the thought “I will give you this much and no more.”

In the latter situations, often it turns out over time that we resort to giving the minimum required to keep love flowing back to ourselves. It happens in human relationships; it happens in spiritual relationships.

No wonder so many Christians are cold in their relationship with God. They have left their first love. The “I give all of myself to you” love is replaced with an “I give you just as much as I have to so that you will keep giving me what I want” kind of love. No wonder God looks at this and says: “I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other! So, because you are lukewarm—neither hot nor cold—I am about to spit you out of my mouth.” (Rev 3:15-16)

Only the most cynical, utilitarian relationships accept the manipulative, contractual arrangement which sometimes is called love, but isn’t. Lovers delight in mutual self-disclosure, vulnerability, and a going-in attitude of “I might not be much, but I’m giving you all I am.”

Throughout the Bible, God reveals Himself, over and over in different ways – by direct statements, by example, by experience – and using different techniques – literary devices, behind-the-scenes shaping of lives and dramatic interventions. He longs to make Himself known to us so that we might respond to Him. Because of this, I dare to ask you as one Christian to another, “How do you relate to God?”

Do you come to Him without reservations, knowing that while you are not all you could be or should be, you are entirely His or is your approach more hesitant as you try to identify areas of your life which you are prepared to give to Him while guarding some aspects for yourself?

Ron Hughes
© January 2007