Love or IN Love?

How many times have you been told to love God? My guess will is hundreds. How many times have you been told that you need to be IN love WITH God? My guess: no where near enough.

That doesn't make it any less true! Yes, the Father is our Abba (daddy). Yes, Jesus is our Savior. Yes, the Holy Spirit is our Comforter. But, Jesus is also our husband. Now, fellas, don't freak out here. We, the Church, are called the Bride of Christ, which indicates marriage. Therefore, Christ is our husband. This means we are to not only love Him, but we are to be IN love WITH Him!

Now, let me ask an even weirder question. Are you IN love WITH your parents? Have I taken it too far for you? Honestly, I hope so. What does it me to be in love with someone? It means, I think, to love them unconditionally, no matter what they do, just because of who they are. It is intimate and intense. Now, let me ask you again, are you IN love WITH your parents? Well, King David sure sounds like he was. Check this:

"O Lord, my heart is not lifted up; my eyes are not raised too high; I do not occupy myself with things too great and too marvelous for me. But I have calmed and quieted my soul, like a weaned child with his mother, like a weaned child is my soul within me." --Psalm 131:1-2

Here, David equates himself to a weaned child with his mother, which shows God's motherly, nurturing characteristics. There are several things to glean from this. One, David does not think highly of himself. He has a heart of humility. Two, he understands that God is responsible for feeding him until he was weaned and could feed himself. And, three, he outlines a loving relationship with God.

We are to humble ourselves before God because HE is responsible for our initial feeding until we can feed ourselves. Afterward, we respond by quieting ourselves. Because of the mother's caring and love for her child, the child responds by loving her just for who she is. The child is IN love WITH her! That is our appropriate response to God!

We aren't to love out of some guilt trip or some over-bearing sense of obligation. We can never earn God's love, so why do we try? We can never prove our love to God, because if we base it upon us proving we love Him, the first time we choose something over Him, and not prove our love, then we fail. He loves us for who we are. No matter who the child is or what he/she has done, his/her parents still love him/her. (If that isn't true of your parents, first, ask them about it, and second, get a hold me somehow and I'll describe to you how God loves and His design for the parent-child relationship.)

Why do we base our response on anything other than how God loves? Is it because we KNOW we don't deserve love from the Creator? That should be even MORE reason to love God for who He is! It is all dependent upon who He is. I encourage you to fall IN love WITH God. Love Him for who He is and for no other reason! I promise, the rest of the Christian life will be easier, because the only thing that counts is "faith working through love" (Galatians 5:6).