“Lord, you are Lord and I want to live with you”. (Part 8)

“Lord, you are Lord and I want to live with you”.

Part 8: Give yourself

“And I want to live with you”. What do we mean by this?

Firstly, if we have met someone who is supremely precious, why on earth would we not choose to be with that person – if such a relationship is on offer? By analogy, who would say, “Oh yes, he’s wonderful and he lives just next door, is always inviting me round, but I don’t ever bother going”. Such a response would be absurd.

What we are saying is that our recognition of the Lord’s worth has “opened our eyes” and transformed our understanding of what life is, what it should be, and what it could be. The values we recognise in God have become the values that we now hold most dear, and our number one aim in life is to be like him. We want to reflect back and express in the way we live our lives what we have learnt from God about what is the supremely precious way to live life. God is life in all its fullness, and as we discover ourselves to be alive, and then, in discovering God, discover that there is an exponentially enhanced way to live life, it is that way of life that becomes our priority. Now, for us, living our life means living in tune with God’s nature and will. So, “being with God”, “living with God”, “serving God”, all, in fact, mean the same thing. In doing so, we also enter into life in all its fullness. There is nothing more. There is nothing else. Many things can be extrapolated from this truth, and they will all be good, but life needs just one recognition, one act of personal commitment, one personal value judgement: “The Lord is Lord, and I want to live with him”.