Aching For Love

Just as the Father has loved Me, I have also loved you; abide in My love. (John 15:9)

Today my husband and I watched five soccer games between our three boys. It’s October, but it felt like December out there. I was so cold I was having a hard time concentrating on their games and not day-dreaming about our warm house. I sort of ached to go home.

Actually, worship is just like this.

Let me explain.

What Humans Are

When Adam and Eve ate the fruit, they joined their lives with the serpent. They left God for the devil, we could say.

As humans who were once joined with the God of perfect Love, we left our true Home. The Bible says our human bodies—the homes our souls dwell in—were literally emptied of the knowledge of God’s perfect love for us (his glory). Its as if we moved into different homes altogether. (Romans. 3:23)

This does not necessarily mean we became overtly evil in every way. It means our actions, accomplishments, and very lives are no longer birthed from perfect Love.

It means we live away from the place we ache for.

What Worship Means

When we examine the original language words from both testaments, worship comes out to mean, “to take the posture of a dog scavenging crumbs on the ground.”

Before you think I’m taking a crazy weird leap, please read on.

How Worship Works

In Matthew 15:21-28 we read of a woman who sought Jesus to receive healing for her daughter. She initially cried for help from a distance. But after she drew close, worshiped him, and asked for help yet again, Jesus said a mysterious thing:

     “It is not good to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.” 

He was responding to her worship, her posture of a scavenging dog. In essence, he was saying, “if you’re a lowly dog, it is not right that I throw to you outside the house what rightly belongs to the children inside.”

Friends, her response was brilliant! She understood exactly what Jesus was getting at.

     “Yes, Lord; but even the dogs feed on the crumbs which fall from their masters’ table.”

In other words, “You’re right. I live outside. But even dogs are allowed into the house to clean under their master’s table.”

What the woman was communicating was that she knew what it was to be human. She finally felt the misery of life outside of perfect Love. From that destitute place, she remembered there’s a God who’s Love is perfect and kind to all. So she got up to go to him, with hope not to be anything to him, only to be where he was.

This was—and is—worship.

Worship was and is one party coming to another in a posture that says, “I ache for your shelter. I’ll do anything for you if I may just dwell in your shelter.”

Aching For Home

As long as we’re in human vessels joined with enemies of darkness, we must learn how to worship. These bodies are like our winter tundra. They scream out that we’re not loved perfectly by God, and it’s hard to not believe them. But when we do—and we will—let us learn to ache for Home.

Today, friend, do you ache for Home? Do you ache to live in his perfect Love? Then friend, worship God.

And see what he, who is Love, does for you!

“So he got up and came to his father. But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and felt compassion for him, and ran and embraced him and kissed him… the father said to his slaves, ‘Quickly bring out the best robe and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand and sandals on his feet; 23 and bring the fattened calf, kill it, and let us eat and celebrate…” (Luke 15:20-23)

KATIE MOON is a Biblical researcher, writer, teacher, and founder of a non-profit online ministry called In Black and Light, where she reaches the world through innovative Bible teaching, written blog messages  and works behind the scenes researching and developing in-depth Bible Study curriculum. Katie and her husband, Garrett, live in Bismarck, North Dakota, with their three sons: Judah, Finnley, and Benton.