This Sunday kicked off our new sermon series called the “Marks of Discipleship.” During this Lenten Season, we are going to explore what it looks like to follow Jesus. We have five marks: Worship, Devo, People, Service, and Stuff. We will explore a new one each week. In addition to this sermon series, we have an Experiencing God course on Sunday mornings at 10 am and devotions for each day on the back of our sermon notes.

This week, I preached about worship. I talked about how worship rightly orients us, and how allowing worship to become secondary or merely habitual can quickly cause many other things to get out of alignment. We explored the Shema and the greatest commandment: “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.”

I talked a lot about how important it is to love the Lord your God, and to love Him with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength. What I didn’t get a chance to talk about is this: how do we get to that point of love? And even more basically, how do we love God?

You may very well be in a place of loving God and knowing how you got there. However, I do not think we talk about the journey to loving God as we do the struggle people have with knowing or proving God’s existence. In our culture, there have been more scholastic attempts to prove or disprove the existence of God over the attempt to understand how to love God. While many of us may do this easily, I wonder if for many of us, that is part of the faith journey itself.

In terms of worship, in Lutheran theology, we believe that the Holy Spirit calls and gathers us together. If you heed the call, you attend. In worship, we do not just talk about God, but encounter Him. In my own personal theology, and maybe it is derivative of a scholar or theologian I have read at some point, I believe and hope that coming to worship is like coming to see someone you deeply love and are excited to see.

For example, like how we sometimes compare God’s love to parental love. I love my Mom so much. Anytime I get to see my Mom, I am super excited. At an ordination and installation service on Saturday at St. Luke’s my mom attended and when I saw her joy filled my heart and I ran over and gave her a hug. I will also be happy to randomly meet my mom anywhere just to have a little time with her.

That’s how I feel that we know when we love God. When we crave that time with Him, when going to worship feels like you are getting to be with the one you love, even if for a little while, and when you get to feel in His presence relief and joy.

That is my theology today. I’m sure it will evolve and deepen as perspectives tend to do, but my point is that this love, when we “love” the Lord our God, becomes a real relationship and a source of joy. It is a commandment but it is also intended to be a gift.

If we aren’t there yet, then how do we grow into loving Him with all our heart?

The good news, I think is that the foundation is not our love for God — but God’s love for us.

As Lutherans, we confess with Martin Luther in the Small Catechism that “I believe that I cannot by my own reason or strength believe in Jesus Christ, my Lord, or come to Him; but the Holy Spirit has called me by the Gospel…”

If we cannot even come to faith on our own, we certainly cannot manufacture love for God. We can’t make it up. We can’t force it. Love is born from the Gospel. It grows where Christ crucified is preached. The love of God becomes real.

Lent is a rich time to think about God’s love in Christ. In this season, we look to the cross and there we see the clearest revelation of God’s heart. In The Holy Bible we hear: “God shows His love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8).

Before you loved God, He loved you. Before you ever desired worship, God desired you.

That is where love begins.

So this love is a gift and there is so much about faith that we cannot own. However, with this being the season of discipline, we are encouraged to pick up a discipline or practice that helps us grow closer to Christ. I hope you have found something meaningful to pick up or release during this Season.

So, while there may be several ways to nuture your love, this would be my first suggestion:

Pray.

Lent is a school of prayer. And one of the most faithful prayers you can pray is this:

“Lord, You command me to love You with all my heart. I confess that I do not. Create in me that love. Show me Your Son. Warm my heart with Your Gospel.” Or, it could be as simple as “Lord, help me understand your love for me and help me to love you” or even “Lord give me a desire to love you.” You can grow your prayer from there.

These prayers are asking for what we need and praying to fulfill what is commanded in scripture. Also, we can ask the Holy Spirit to help us where we lack. It may not come immediately; it may take time. I don’t expect that you will experience emotional intensity, but rather it will come as hunger and fulfillment.

For example, when we fast from a meal, from noise, from entertainment, or from distraction, we feel our hunger. That physical hunger becomes a teacher. It reminds us: “Man shall not live by bread alone.” It creates space. And into that space, we place God’s Word.

As bodily hunger grows, so can spiritual hunger. And when Sunday comes, we are not just attending worship — we are hungry to be fed. Hungry to hear the Gospel. Hungry to receive Christ’s body and blood. And then worship becomes the feast after the fast.

Lent invites us to linger with Christ in His suffering.

When you read the Passion accounts slowly — Christ praying in Gethsemane, standing silent before His accusers, carrying His cross — you begin to see the depth of His love. This is not abstract love. This is personal. He suffers for you.

And when we get the depth of this love, worship changes. You are not gathering with strangers to check something off. You are coming to the One who gave Himself for you.

Worship becomes reunion. Just like how you feel when you see someone you deeply love. Like how I mentioned my Mom. Who would this be for you? Think of someone you deeply love. You do not dread time with them. You anticipate it. Why? Because you know their heart toward you.

Worship is coming to the One whose heart is entirely for you.

And as we dwell where God’s love is proclaimed — in Word and Sacrament — the Spirit does His quiet work. There is grace, then faith, then love.

And when love grows, worship is no longer merely a command to obey. It becomes like coming home to Someone who has loved you all along — Someone who meets you every Sunday with forgiveness, life, and salvation.

In Lent, we walk toward the cross. And at the cross, we discover that the God who commands our love has already given us His heart.