Do You Truly Love Me More Than These?

For months I have felt God working on my heart...giving me glimpses of His truths, challenging me to learn to trust more explicitly in Him for my every need and desire.  I have walked with, learned from, and experienced Christ in many ways in my life already, but now I feel him calling me to something more; to surrender the remaining areas of myself that I have refused to give up before.  It is a call for utter dependence on Christ.  I have felt this call, and I have resisted it...am still resisting it.  

Slowly He has been showing me that something I have long regarded as a merit He regards as sin...my self-sufficient independence.  It is the last-standing stronghold of my heart where I have refused to let Christ open the door.  For years I have been proud of my independence...my ability to take care of myself (in most cases), to act alone, and to succeed on my own.  It sprung up as a mechanism to hide hurt...to be self-sufficient was to be a safety against others inflicting pain or letting me down.  I see know more clearly than before that my own selfish pride in my independence has been the greatest barrier to truly loving and trusting God and experiencing all He has for me.  Even now the prospect of totally putting away my well-organized, always-be-prepared, planned-out, don't-really-need-any-help self frightens me.  It is how I have defined myself for years...without it I would be...what?  It means throwing out the carefully plotted road map I have made and setting out a journey with nothing...not even any idea of where I will end up.   

Something the guest speaker at church said yesterday really hit home in terms of how I view my life and how I view God's role in my life.  He was referenced John 21:15-16, where Christ is "reinstating Peter" after he thrice denied the Messiah a few chapters earlier.  Peter has gone home, and has gone back to fishing - back to his comfort zone - when the Lord appears to him and a few others.  Three times Jesus asks Peter, "Do you truly love me?"  Peter's response is always the same, "Yes, Lord...you know that I love you."  He was calling Peter to service, calling him to a life of the unknown, but a life of complete dependence on God, born out of a deep love for Christ.  I'd like to think that if Jesus was asking me "Heather, do you truly love me?" that I would answer just like Peter did.  However, have I really shown that love to Christ?  Do I live as if I truly love Christ?  Does He have preference and priority in my life?  "You won't put him first until you love Him," the speaker said.  Do my actions show my love for my Savior?  Or would my answer just be empty words.  

Am I willing to leave let go of everything in my "comfort zone" in order to love and serve Christ?  That was what Jesus was asking Peter in vs. 15 when he asked, "Do you truly love me more than these?"  What are these?  Fishing, Galilee, friends, family, the comfort zone.  Peter gave it all up and set out with no certain destination, to definite timeline...just an earnest desire to serve the Savior he loved and to follow wherever He led him.  Could I do that?

Softly and tenderly Jesus has been tugging on my heart.  Jeremiah 31:3, "I have loved you with an everlasting love; I have drawn you with loving-kindness," has certainly been true for me.  Now he wants to be my strong tower (Prv. 18:10)...not just when I think I need him.  He wants to be my strong tower period.  In everything.  No conditions.  He wants an end to ANY reliance upon myself and total reliance upon him.  Do I truly love Him more than I love my self-sufficient pride?   Can I give up my self-oriented security and live in the shelter of the Strong Tower?