It seems to me, as regards His church, that God desires a lover, not a servant.
   To back that up I refer to no less authority than the Great Commandment.
   "Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?" Jesus replied: " 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments." (Mt 22:37-40)
   Of course, God neither needs a servant (Acts 17:25) nor a lover (1 John 4:19). But although God has no need for our love, God Himself IS love. And, if I'm not mistaken, "love" requires an object, and the trinitarian God who has always had love abounding within Himself between Father, Son, and Spirit, enjoys ever expanding this eternal love through pouring it out upon creatures made as objects of His love.
   Not that, by contrasting love with service, I mean to nullify the significance of action in the life of God's beloved. For certainly throughout Scripture God has had "stuff" for His people to "do." But it seems to me that God's prime objective with His people is not getting them to "do stuff." From the beginning of Scripture to the end, it seems to me that God is calling for a people who belong wholly to Him; wholemindedly His, wholeheartedly His, wholestrengthedly His.
   The Law and the Prophets have a lot of "stuff" to "do" (or "don't do"). But the Law and the Prophets are not a foundation. They hang. Foundations don't hang. Find out what the Law and Prophets hang on, and you'll find something more foundational than them.
   The "love" which is not an abuse of the word is of such nature that it cannot help but overflow in action (1 John 3:17-18). If the love of God permeates one's heart, mind, and soul, will he worship other gods? Make idols? Take the Lord's name in vain? Forsake devoting the Sabbath to Him? Will one who loves God and neighbor dishonor parents, kill, commit adultery, steal, lie, covet? When love is genuine, the affections of the heart, the thoughts of the mind, and the actions of the body are in harmony to demonstrate that love. Love overflows from its source. Where it exists, it is not containable.
   "Pray without ceasing" - Who doesn't yearn to communicate with the One they love?
   "Always be prepared to give an answer to anyone who asks you to give a reason for the hope that is within you" - Who doesn't enjoy to talk about the One they love?
   "Each one should use whatever gift he has received to serve others" - Who doesn't desire to give what they have for the benefit of those they love (Acts 2:45)?
   So we see that God has called us to be wholly in love with Him. Any other "stuff" there is to "do" is merely a natural consequence. That's how Law and the Prophets "hang" on the Great Commandment. If genuine wholehearted, wholeminded, wholestrengthed love is there, then everything else is corollary. If the wholehearted, wholeminded, wholestrengthed love is missing, everything else will be lacking.

   God Himself loves in a complete, wholistic way. He describes Himself as a "Jealous God." His love is deficient not in truth, nor in passion, nor in power. It seems to me that, likewise, God desires in His church a wholehearted, wholeminded, wholestrengthed lover. Unless I've fallen prey to some subtle logical fallacy, this is nothing more than a restatement of what Jesus called the first and greatest command. His fundamental concern with us is our "being", not our "doing." The latter hangs on the former. Naturally, a lover serves; but a servant may not love.
   There is plenty of "Christians stuff" to "do" these days. Bible studies, meetings, social activities, outreach activities, ministries, missions, and whatnot. Stuff is happening. But do we have the faintest idea of what it is to be Christ's lover? To BE a wholehearted, wholeminded, wholestrengthed lover of God?
   Sure I love God. But that is not the First and Greatest Commandment. I repeat. The Great Commandment (recorded by Moses and ultimately emphasized by Jesus) does NOT say "Love God." Rather, 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' Now that's an entirely different state of affairs.

   Beyond our own experience, I believe God has given us means to glimpse what being a wholehearted, wholeminded, wholestrengthed lover of Him can be like. For as long as I've been a Christian, reading the New Testament record of the church, Acts in particular, churns a tension and desire within me. Bluntly put, the Christianity I read about in the Bible seems foreign to the Christianity I know in experience. Acts 2:43 summarizes it well, "And awe (or fear) came upon every soul." Something huge was at hand. Something that would utterly change "reality" as they knew it, something that would "change the world" more than 100 WTC terrorist attacks. The kingdom of God had broken into the world, the Messiah had risen, Almighty God was immanent. That's big. Every sould was filled with awe. AWE of God.
   My perception is that such awe is nearly extinct today. The "whole God thing" is all too familiar and mundane in our Christian cultural experience. "Familiarity", in some sense, with our intimate Father, is a wonderful blessing. Losing sight, though, of His AWEsome transcendence, leads to an atmosphere of nothing more than, "God is good! God is great! What's next?"

   I think most Christians would agree, that the sense of Christianity we get from the NT is quite a profound thing, and quite a step away from anything we know. The Christianity of Acts has a strong appeal to many of us. Yet, at the same time, we are also creatures of comfort. Change is painful, difficult, frightening. Stagnation less so. And, so it comes about, I would say, that we have two firehoses we use to extinguish the embers that Acts ignites.
   1) We remind ourselves that the church wasn't perfect even then, and we shouldn't idolize it. True enough. Corinthian immorality, Colossian and Galatian heresies, even "strife" amongst the church leaders (Acts 15:39; Gal 2:11). Yet, amidst all her imperfections, it still seems to me that she stands as a lighthouse, giving us a "glimpse" of what it is like for the bride of Christ to be His wholehearted, wholeminded, wholestrengthed lover. God Himself, speaking to the church in Ephesus, rebukes them over the distinction between their FORMER and LATTER love. "But I have this against you, that you have abandoned the love you had at first." (Rev 2:4) Undoubtedly both former and latter love were imperfect, but there is a significant gap between the different shades of imperfection. So let us not say that just because church in Acts was imperfect, and we are also imperfect, that things are basically the same. I would say there's a world of difference.
   2) Second, we extinguish the fire of Acts by saying, "That was a unique period in church history." Now, when it comes to miracles, healings, apostles, prophets, and such things we can have a healthy debate about what was or wasn't unique to that time. But all that aside, will someone actually argue that the LOVE we find in Acts was unique to that time? Maybe God only desired a surge of miracles in the "apostolic age", but would we say that a church brimming with passion was Gods desire only for one specific age? It seems to me that calling forth a people wholeheartedly, wholemindedly, wholestrengthedly His has been one of God's primary works since the beginning of this world.
   A similar fire extinguisher goes along these lines. When God gives commands, such as the Great Commandment, He sets a perfect standard. "Be holy as I am holy." But in this life we will never reach perfection.
   So the argument goes, and granted, it is true. But in regard to the current topic, may we note that Acts is narrative. In other words, its not a set of instructions, it is a record of what actually happened, IN THIS WORLD. Their love wasn't complete, but they had a foretaste of wholly consuming love for God that I don't think we can scarcely imagine. (In addition to Acts, we have the records of "revival" of wholehearted, wholeminded, wholestrengthed love for God, which also occured in this same fallen world we live in. May I again state my opinion that "re-vival", "back to living", should not be viewed as an "unusual, extraordinary" state of the church, but rather the continuous standard we are called to.)

   So I don't accept the "explanations" that would extinguish the fire that Acts ignites in me. I continue to be challenged by reading of:

- Overflowing desire for worship, fellowshipp, and prayer. "And they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. And awe came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles." (Acts 2:42-43)

- Widespread proclamation of the gospel by HHoly Spirit empowered leaders. "And every day, in the temple and from house to house, they did not cease teaching and preaching Jesus as the Christ." (Acts 5:42) "I did not shrink from declaring to you anything that was profitable, and teaching you in public and from house to house" (Acts 20:20)

- The gospel overflowing from all believers wherever they went. "They were all scattered... Now those who were scattered went about preaching the word." (Acts 8:1-4)

- Such satisfaction in Christ that sufferingg for Him is counted joy. "Then they left the presence of the council, rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer dishonor for the name." (Acts 5:41)

- Such Christ-centered priorities, and compaassion for the brethren, that they gladly give away temporal possessions. "All the believers were together and had everything in common. Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need." (Acts 2:44-45)

- Etc., etc.

   I do not believe it is a sign of a healthy, wholehearted, wholeminded, wholestrengthed love for God that we can reach the one-hour programmed "end" of our worship services or Bible studies, and immediately turn all attention to other matters. Do we remotely know what it is to be swept away by the glory of the Almighty, Eternal God whose presence - by miraculous grace - we have access to, whose piercing, refreshing, enlightening, convicting Word we have the priviledge and responsibility to tremble under?
   I do not believe it is a sign of a healthy, wholehearted, wholeminded, wholestrengthed love for God when we strategize evangelism "events" and "techniques" to make up for the fact that the Word of God is not naturally overflowing from our hearts through our lips. I've never heard of a seminar that "trains" people to talk about the one their heart loves. That's becomes it comes quite naturally. I don't see any seminars on evangelism in Acts either; probably for the same reason. There seems to me something sorely unhealthy if sharing our love for God with those around us is a "burden" we "should" do rather, than an overflow of the fullness of awe.

   In summary; things are not OK. That is my opinion. Our understanding, in this age, of the wholehearted, wholeminded, wholestrengthed love relationship with God that we are (graciously) called to, is unacceptably deficient. The modern evangelical standard of what it means to love God is unhealthfully insufficient. We've forgotten the measure of what love is. We've forgotten the INTENSITY of what Biblically described love is like. The Scriptural call to "re-vival" is not so much a call to a new thing, as it is a call to an OLD thing. "Remember therefore from where you have fallen." Remember! Church, bride of Christ, remember what your love USED to look like. "Repent, and do the works you did at first." (Rev 2:4-5) Remember the old ways. Remember!
   Disagree if you wish; tell me why. But as for me, I must bluntly say that the situation today is not OK. It seems to me that Jesus said wholehearted, wholeminded, wholestrengthed love for God is to be our highest and primary aim. And by that measure, I am led to repentance, and to hunger for transformation/reformation/revival.

   But I find at the same time, that my heart is oh so slow to change. I would like, here and now, to will myself into wholehearted, wholeminded, wholestrengthed love for God. I've tried. It hasn't happened. But I know what I want. I want to be a lover of God, wholly His. And I hold on to that hope and desire. Ultimately to be fulfilled in the age to come. But even in this age, a far bigger foretaste is not only conceivable but, I believe, demanded.
   God, you command wholehearted, wholeminded, wholestrengthed love from me. Grant what you command.