My Utmost for His Highest - April 30th - The Spontaneity of Love

4 Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, 5 does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, 6 does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; 7 bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. 8 Love never fails; but if there are gifts of prophecy, they will be done away; if there are tongues, they will cease; if there is knowledge, it will be done away. - I Corinthians 13:4-8

    Love is not premeditated, it is spontaneous, i.e., it bursts up in extraordinary ways. There is nothing of mathematical certainty in Paul's category of love. We cannot say--"Now I am going to think no evil; I am going to believe all things." The characteristic of love is spontaneity. We do not set the statements of Jesus in front of us as a standard; but when His Spirit is having His way with us, we live according to His standard without knowing it, and on looking back we are amazed at the disinterestedness of a particular emotion, which is the evidence that the spontaneity of real love was there. In everything to do with the life of God in us, its nature is only discerned when it is past.

    [The springs of love are in God, not in us. It is absurd to look for the love of God in our hearts naturally, it is only there when "it has been shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit. (Romans 5:5)"]

    If we try to prove to God how much we love Him, it is a sure sign that we do not love Him. The evidence of our love for Him is the absolute spontaneity of our love, it comes naturally. In looking back we cannot tell why we did certain things, we did them according to the spontaneous nature of His love in us. The life of God manifests itself in this spontaneous way because the springs of love are in the Holy Ghost.

- From Oswald Chambers, "My Utmost for His Highest" - Classic Edition

Highlights and Underlines are courtesy of Mom from her print edition.

My thoughts

This lesson is near yesterday's. The idea I think is basically that I cannot manufacture my love for God for Love is spontaneous and since He is in me, my love to Him comes about in spontaneity. It is not forced or predetermined. It happens according to His ways and timing.