Vicky from Wisconsin writes in to ask, quote, often I hear that we are to love God for who

he is, not for what he does for us, to love the giver more than the gifts.

How do we know that we are doing this?

When I examine my own heart, so much of what I know about God seems to be in relationship

to what I enjoy based upon his work as my creator, as my redeemer, etc.

I'm just not sure how I know how to separate that out, perhaps I make it too complicated.

End quote. Pastor John, what would you say to Vicky?

He's probably not making it too complicated because it is complicated,

but when we find things are complicated, probably we need to back up and look for a simple way

to live because God doesn't mean us for complication to paralyze us and to diminish our sense of

enjoyment of him or his gifts. So I would affirm, first of all, she's right,

experiencing God and Jesus through their gifts is inseparable from experiencing him directly

because we are creatures and we are creatures in bodies and as embodied creatures,

God has put us in a world to experience him indirectly. He is not our gifts, he is not his gifts,

he is different from his gifts and yet we experience him through his gifts and everybody knows

that the love for a person and the love for their gifts are not the same and yet we experience

love through gifts, through touch, through sight, through Christmas presents under the tree.

And we also know, and this gets right, I think, close to the heart of the matter, is that

if you love a person, if you love your wife and she gave some thought to buying you a gift and

puts it under the tree and you opened it on Christmas morning, you know that she will feel loved

if you go bananas over this gift. If you lay the gift aside and say, I really don't care about

this, just you, you know, that's going to get old, you know, however, if a man breaks into your

...