What I Really Love

What I Really Love

I love to catch fish. It is one of the greatest feelings on this side of eternity. The moment when a crappie, bass, or redfish bites the bait and ticks my line, a primal adrenaline rush ensues as I set the hook. For myself, and many others, this feeling rests at the top of a mountain with few other pleasures. A careful reader will have noticed, I did not say I love to fish, but to catch fish. I had to come to the stark realization of this in the past few years. I will no longer go fishing on days that I am not overly confident that I will catch many fish.

I think catching redfish started this in me. A redfish will eat a bait in front of it, period. Saltwater fish are significantly more aggressive than fresh water fish and this first trip I made to the marsh I realized I was rewarded much more heavily than on my bass fishing ventures. Upon returning from the trip, I no longer had the fire to grind out hours on the lake trying to figure out the patterns, proper lure colors, and whatever other preference had to be accommodated for the fish to bite. I only wanted to set the hook and lip the fish, and I had to deal with the fact that I no longer loved to fish like I had before.

“For whatever you seem to love, if it is on account of something else, what you do really love is that something else, not the apparent object of desire… So all the more, one who loves God truly asks no other recompense than God Himself; for if he should demand anything else it would be the prize that he loved and not God.” -Bernard of Clairvaux

Bernard highlights this same dilemma in our spiritual lives. What is the true object of my worship, do I derive pleasure from the presence and opportunity to worship God, or is my pleasure dependent on the environmental circumstances of how this action occurs. Can I not be satisfied to worship God if some participant or leader performs out-of-tune with my expectations. Am I upset if there is an area of improvement that I see not being improved, to the point that it impedes the joy I have from worshipping God.

 Many churches have split and individuals have left congregations, where they felt unsatisfied. Surely there is room from improvement in nearly every area of worship, bible classes, and ministries at every congregation around the globe and it is not wrong to want improvement; but if I cannot be filled with joy from worshipping and serving God because there are defects in those areas, I might love a well-tuned worship experience more than a faultless God.

“Now set your heart and your soul to seek the Lord your God; then arise, and build the sanctuary of the Lord God.”  1 Chronicles 22:19 NASB