Simply loving Jesus.

A little longer: Jenn Johnson

What can I do for you?

What can I give to you?

What kind of song would you like me to sing?

I’ll dance a dance for you,

I’ll pour out my love to you,

What can I give to you, beautiful king?

Cause I can’t thank you enough.

Then I hear you sing to me:

“You don’t have to do a thing,

Just simply be with me and let those things go.

It can wait another minute.
Wait, this moment is too sweet, please stay here with me

And love on me a little longer

Cause I’m in love with you”

When we love someone we want to please them - this is so important! We want to make them happy, because this makes us happy, and we want to express our love to this person because this is our natural response. With God, we love him and so we respond with our lives. We thank him for his amazing gift of life by showing him our love.

But, I remember the story of Mary and Martha, in which two very different responses are shown: Mary chose to simply sit at Jesus’ feet and hang on his every word, whilst Martha made herself busy filling time with things she saw as important. I am sure that Martha may also have wanted to show how much she loved Jesus – but in striving to publically DO lots of things, she missed the point. Jesus just wanted HER. Any offering we bring to him will not compare with our undivided attention, and all of our hearts. He loves us, and intimacy with him is more important than anything we could strive to accomplish. We can show our love for God in lots of different ways and serve him with all of our lives, but something so liberating is the fact that the most important response he is looking for is for us to simply sit at his feet - to turn our gaze towards him and love on him. We love because he first loved us (1 John 4:19) and so now we should not forget the intimacy that is available to us. The heart of God longs to be close to ours. There is a wonderful innocence and purity (and power) in coming before Jesus simply to love him and to enjoy being in the presence of our Beloved.

Luke 10:38-42:

As Jesus and his disciples were on their way, he came to a village where a woman named Martha opened her home to him. She had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet listening to what he said. But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made. She came to him and asked, “Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!”
“Martha, Martha,” the Lord answered, “you are worried and upset about many things, but few things are needed—or indeed only one. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.”

With an undivided heart and a life gazing solely on the face of Jesus, we will sit at his feet and pour out our love on the one who first loved us - and indeed this will not be taken away from us.