Beloved

Why understanding that God loves you is important to a Rule of Life

A rule of life is itself a good thing particularly when its goal is to help us aim at Christ and to undertake every work in a posture of resemblance to him. Naturally we will miss of course because we are human and prone to both distraction and vice but we can come very near and to come near to him is all he asks because Christ is the Kingdom and above all things we should seek it first. This is what makes for a good rule of life; one which helps us seek out that kingdom. There are many rules of life that do as such but they are all worthless if we do not understand and accept how God feels about us. Long before the Desert Fathers and their cells, there were the Ancient Israelites who toiled in the desert for forty years learning to live together with God. The word of God spoken through Moses and a short time later the Ten Commandments could be described as the very first rule of life. God intended to save the world through a prepared people but before they could partner with him in that endeavor, they needed to learn something important. They needed to learn that they were beloved. The Ten Commandments were useless otherwise.  

The Israelites at one point feared that God had brought them out into the wilderness to kill them. So blind in their ability to understand that God sought partnership with them they even suggested that a return to slavery under the Egyptians was preferable to where God had brought them. This is why they were in the desert so long.

When you don’t know and accept you are beloved by God you are unable to go anywhere in the spiritual life. You remain in the desert.

 If we as spiritual beings do not embrace the love of our creator who is himself a spiritual being then we cannot hope to accomplish anything in his name. When Moses questioned his worth in being tasked with going before the Pharaoh, God’s only reply was to say that he would be right there alongside him. Before Jesus set out on his ministry God’s first response was to let him know just how pleased he was with him. This should help us take heart; being beloved by God is an invitation to a journey. It was true for the Israelites and it was true for the disciples. The whole of Acts is essentially the story of a people that acted on the knowledge that they were beloved by God and that is how churches came into being. This is why the Pauline Letters were written and for each of these churches they became like a rule of life.

To be beloved by God is what makes a rule of life worthwhile. Seeing that he loves us even before we begin to do anything in his name ought to spur us on. To keep us close to the heart of God is what a rule of life is made for and of course if you are keeping close to God then a ministry is forming in you. I do not necessarily mean that being close to God will make you a youth pastor or another pastor of some kind, but rather your eyes will begin to notice all the manner of things that ought to be set to rights and then presently you will begin doing something about them. The longer you stick with it the more you find that you have become a walking, breathing, living ministry which is entirely the point.

You cannot become this without knowing that you are beloved by God. We can be other things of course. We could be successful lawyers or bankers but these things only benefit an economy that does not have long to live.

To know you are beloved by God is to participate in his economy which is infinitely better than anything we could ever conceive on our own. Our ministry in the world resolves to do nothing less than invite others into this economy and the beginning of this economy is love.

If you do not know that the Father loves you then what good is his discipline? What good is the ministry that is born from the practice of that discipline? It would not exist, therefore we must understand that we are loved by him because a rule of life put into practice carries with it that understanding. It is an expression of our love for him