Focus on Worship: August 2005 Archives

“More love, more power, more of you in my life.” What should Christians be thinking when they sing the song “More Love, More Power”? What light might the gospel shed on this particular song text? It seems to me that too often Christians tend to sing songs like this utterly disconnected from the truth of the gospel. What do I mean? Is it wrong to long for more of God’s love and power at work in our lives? Is it improper for us to thirst for God? Absolutely not. Consider these verses:

Philippians 3:10 that I may know him and the power of his resurrection…

Ephesians 3:19 [Paul prays that the Ephesians might] know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

Psalm 63:1 O God, you are my God; earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you; my flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water.

The desire for God’s love and power and Person is a very good desire. But a problem arises when this good desire is disconnected from the gospel in our thinking. Let me explain. What might we be thinking when our request to know more of God’s love is disconnected from the gospel? Might we be hoping that God will somehow mysteriously inject more of His love into our spiritual veins? Do we hope that somehow we will wake up one morning with a deeper sense of His transforming love? “Wow, God has answered my prayer! He’s given me more of His love!”

Consider the desire for God’s love in light of Romans 5:8. “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” Paul does not say that God showed His love for us at the cross. He says that God shows His love for us at the cross. The tense of the verb is utterly important. If it is true that God continuously demonstrates His love for us through something that happened in the distant past, some 2000 years ago, what should we do if we desire to know and experience more of His love?

Just a few verses earlier in Romans 5:5, Paul says that “God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.” What I find interesting is that the verses immediately preceding and following that statement are filled with gospel content.

Romans 5:1-2 Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. [2] Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God.

Romans 5:6 For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly.

I think what is indicated by these verses is that the Holy Spirit does not pour God’s love into our hearts in isolation from the gospel. After all, we’ve already seen in verse 8 that God’s love is being demonstrated to us at the cross. The Holy Spirit poured God’s love into our hearts by bringing us to the cross where we saw that “while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). And I believe that the Holy Spirit continues to pour God’s love into our hearts as we sit at the foot of the cross beholding its wondrous glory.

So, when you find yourself asking God for more love, more power, more of Him in your life, make sure you ask Him at the foot of the cross. It is there that we find all the love and power we could ever want. After all, the gospel is the very power of God unto everything we need in this life and the life to come (Romans 1:16).