How do you envision love? What is your idea of love?
As I read through the book of Psalms, I consistently see mention of God’s unfailing and forever enduring love. Sadly, many of us don’t think that kind of love is even possible. We’re so used to worrying about whether our latest mess up will cause someone to stop loving us. Think about it, would we worry so much about success if there wasn’t a desire to be loved behind it?
For myself, this would often arise in my schoolwork. I felt like I needed to be perfect. The lowest grade I would accept for myself was a 98%. Unfortunately, this meant that my world was crushed if I receive a passing grade of 80%. Countless tears have been shed over acceptable and well earned grades over the years. At least it did benefit me when I was applying to colleges, but other than that, it was too much to expect from myself.
Why did I do this? I mistook my parent’s congratulations when I received a good grade for their expression of love. By acknowledging that as their love, I was blind to their actual expression of love. Because of that, I had to always be excelling, above average in every academic adventure so that I could earn their love. In reality, I never had to earn their love. They loved me simply for who I was. The only thing I could earn was respect for being a hard worker.
How does this approach to love potentially affect your relationship with Jesus? Unfortunately, we can come to Jesus attempting to earn His love. However, that is impossible to do since He freely gave it to us. We don’t earn salvation either. We don’t even earn the privilege of keeping our salvation. Living a godly life does not earn you anything because it is simply the way of life you are supposed to follow once you accept salvation.
Considering our normal approach to love, how are we actually supposed to approach love? Remember how I mentioned God’s unfailing and forever enduring love? Do you know how we have knowledge of such love? Because love is action, and we have seen God act toward us in love so we know it never fails or leaves.
How can we do the same? Start off by remembering that love has nothing to do with feelings. You can feel butterflies in your stomach looking at someone one day and then the next have a rock in your stomach. That could either be swaying human emotions or bad gas station sushi. Real love is seen when someone actively does things to make that person’s life easier or to brighten their day. Tauren Wells even has a song called “Love is Action.”
Don’t mistake my words for saying when you’re tired and can’t do anything more you no longer love someone. That it simply human exhaustion that everyone has. Even Jesus had to rest! Just remind yourself that if God can love you all the time, you can love others. More importantly, what I most want you to think about is that if God can love us all the time, we can love Him back all the time.
See, I want us to live our lives as active Christians who truly love God. Our actions will prove our love. Even the book of James says our faith without works are dead. That is not because we have to earn the faith. This is because we can only display our love through actions. Let me encourage you today to love God with unfailing and forever enduring love.
For great is his love toward us, and the faithfulness of the Lord endures forever. Psalm 117:2
New International Version
