“Nevertheless I have this against you, that you have left your first love.”

-Revelation 2:4

I realized I am having an affair.

A love affair with money. Forsaking the requests for attention by my first love for the demands of my mistress.

Who has my attention? My desire? My obsession? What is the subject of my thoughts and worries, my plans and hopes?

Is it You, Lord?

Chapters 4 and 5 of II Chronicles detailed how Solomon used up so much precious metal in the building of the temple that he DIDN’T COUNT IT.

An earlier chapter states that he loved You.

When was the last time I gave to You and didn’t count it up? Didn’t pay attention to every detail of exactly what I gave up? When someone has your heart, that’s how you treat them. You’re not counting. Anything they want, anything they need: “YES, take it, it’s yours, because I am yours, completely.”

You certainly don’t meet their requests with: “No, look how much I’ve already given you.” 

Not when they have your heart. When they have your heart, they have everything.

“Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

-Matthew 6:21

I know I have yours. You gave it freely without ever looking back.

“He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not, with Him, also freely give us all things?”

–Romans 8:32

That’s what someone who’s truly in love acts like.

I have been pondering Solomon’s request for several days. He asked for wisdom and You acclaimed him for it, and so I have assumed that’s the BEST thing one could ask for.

But as I watch his story unfold, as he raced after wealth and power and security and wives and holdings…I decided that was HIS story, this is mine.

I do not want my own wisdom, lest I lean on it and run after other loves.

I want to love You.

So give me an enduring, deep, aching, paralyzing, burning, freeing, lasting love for You, Lord. I want to love nothing else in your place. I want to remember that I don’t need what I so desperately think I do.

You asked me to follow You, and I cried “but what if it uses up my entire savings account?!”

“where your treasure is…”

–Matthew 6:21

100% of affairs make you miserable. They are poison to a heart intended to beat for one alone.

“You cannot love both God and money.”

–Matthew 6:24

That which occupies my thoughts…THAT is what I love.

“Do not worry…”

–Matthew 6:34

Sweet whispers from the One who would see me be free from the blackmail of fear; who would take me into His arms again without hesitation, though my loyalties have once again proven false.

I have been in a panic – pleading with You to make this okay by giving me more of another’s love.

You must feel spit upon.

Give me more of You, Lord. If the savings account goes empty, You may have it. It is Yours. I am Yours. If I never become anything more than what I have already been, grant me this: that I grow closer to You. That I learn to truly love you,

having counted the cost, and yet…not counting at all.