Your true love

As we begin a new year, we often try to improve on our ‘performance’ in the different areas of our lives. The fact is that, at the core of much of what we need to change is how we love. Love for God, for ourselves, and for each other.

One of the deepest needs of the human heart is to be loved by others. Not only do we want to be loved, but we want others to experience love from us. Many of us go through a lifetime searching for this ‘true love’ and this search motivates many of our decisions. The truth is that this desire for love is not going to be fully satisfied until we encounter God’s pure love. True love starts with God because “God is love” (1 John 4:16).

God doesn’t just have or show love. Love is the nature, character, and essence of who God is. The only reason we’re even able to give and receive love, is because we’re made in God’s image. He is love and He’s never made anything He doesn’t love. Each of us were created as an object of God’s love and our desire for love comes from God and will only be fully satisfied in Him.

We must allow God to love us. If we don’t, we’re only going to be like spinning wheels on a stationary bicycle, searching for an illusive, self-satisfying love and wearing ourselves out, while never finding it.

One of our challenges is that we don’t understand God’s love because it’s so foreign to us. It’s so over and above all our experiences that we’re suspicious of it. The Bible tells us “This is real love – not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to take away our sins.” 1 John 4:10 (NLT).

God’s love is unconditional, with no strings attached. It is not based on anything we carry to the table. Before we had love for God or ever heard about Him, God loved us. This is real love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us. God loves us regardless of our personality, looks, wealth or giftings, He knows everything about us, and still loves us unreservedly.

The truth is that His love is strange to us because for us, there’s always a ‘why’? And His only response is ‘because God is love’. It’s personal, forgiving, and unending as He says, “I have loved you with an everlasting love; I have drawn you with unfailing kindness…” Jeremiah 31:3 (NIV). It doesn’t change nor is it dependent on circumstances and we cannot earn it.

This is so opposite to our experience in our performance-oriented world that teaches us that it’s only when we perform well that we’ll be applauded, rewarded, and loved. We come to God with the same performance mentality, but He has written a non-performance clause which says, “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith – and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God, not by works, so that no one can boast.” Ephesians 2:8-9 (NIV).

Some of our struggle with God is because we don’t understand Him and His love. It’s unbelievable to us, so we resist it. But this year, “…I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, 18 may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, 19 and to know this love that surpasses knowledge...” Ephesians 3:17b-19 (NIV). Happy New Year!