I had returned from Romania to Massachusetts just a few days before and happened to be home all by myself one October evening.  Sitting at my kitchen table, I had my Bible open and was meditating on John 15.15 – “No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, because all things that I have heard from My Father I have made known to you.”  Amazed, it was almost like I couldn’t believe that the Creator of the world, my Savior and my Sustainer would want to impress upon me that He is my friend.  Friend!   I knew that verse well, but He buried it so deep in my heart – stamped it on my spirit that He loved me so much that I was not considered a servant – but His friend!  Beyond humbling!!  I felt so unworthy.  But it is what the Scripture was saying.

But then He began to impress upon me that I needed to love Him more.  More?!   I had thought that you either loved one, or you didn’t – and that if you loved another more, it would come over time – grow – as you knew that person more intimately.  So, how does one go about that – suddenly loving one more?  I certainly loved my Jesus – my Friend – knowing that, perhaps, as I grew in Him that, indeed, I would love Him more.  I gave it some serious thought – pondered on how I could do this.  Do more things for Him?  Spend more time in the Word?  Pray more?  Lean more on Him?  I got no satisfaction with any of those possibilities of how to love Jesus more.

I thought about if I talked with my sons and my telling them that they should really love me more – and their asking me how they possibly could.  I would probably be deeply hurt that they couldn’t figure it out and say, “Unbelievable!  You don’t love me with your whole heart?  Forget it!”

Not even realizing that my heart wasn’t full – filled! – with love for Him, Jesus was coming to me to let me know that I needed to love Him more.  I didn’t know how to do that!  Finally, I bowed my head on folded hands, and with no recourse, ever so humbly asked, “Would You, please, give me more love – to love You more?”  If I were He, I would have been very intolerant – shaken my head in disbelief.  But He did not respond to me as I might have to my sons.

Instead – He flooded/saturated/suffused/spread throughout my heart – my whole being – a depth of love I had never known.  I was deeper in love with the Savior than ever before – I longed to be in His presence – with the depth of the love of a Friendship I had never known before!

I read Richard Foster’s book, ‘Prayer’ so long ago that I don’t know if I’m quoting him exactly as he said it – but the essence of what he was saying went something like this – “If I found out – for sure – that there were no Jesus – I would still love Him”.   That’s the kind of love the Savior breathed into me that one October evening so many years ago.