Surface love helps you get what you want and may not be there when things get tough. Also, it may have some foundation of seeking its own needs and desires. God’s love goes deeper. His love is focused on teaching you how to have wholesome relationships and personal responsibility. Those things yield the most peace, purpose and joy in life.
- John 13:34-35 A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.
- Luke 10:27 And he answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.”
- 1 Corinthians 13:4-8,13 Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.
God’s two greatest commandments for us to love Him with all our heart and to love our neighbor as ourselves. Expanding on that:
- Loving God with all our heart: God is not in need of our approval. God wants us to trust Him because He has good wisdom and intentions for us. It brings a parent joy when their child trusts them and makes better decisions. Once we recognize that God is far more loving and wise than us, the door is open to a much more purposeful and rewarding life.
- Loving our neighbor as ourselves: God defines “neighbor” as anyone in this world that we might have interaction with or we can impact. In Acts 20:35, God tells us we have likely already heard and didn’t realize that it came from Him. He tells us that “it is more rewarding to give than to receive“. It is our design and purpose to help others — including those with whom we strongly disagree. It is hard to be angry with someone you are helping and/or praying for. There is nothing more rewarding than helping others be successful in life.
Many reading this do not have a good example of a loving and wise parent. For those, hopefully you have someone that is loving and wise in your life such as a coach, a trustworthy friend or a grandparent that can help you understand what the parent-child relationship should look like. The parent-child design is not an accident. God put it in our design and then calls Himself our Father. Also, all Christians are also on this journey and are successful to different levels at seeking, trusting and following God’s love and wisdom. God wants us to understand that He is not only more loving and wise than us, but that He has a very good plan for us — if we will just listen, trust and follow. Some things loving and wise parents do:
- Make personal sacrifices to be a part of their child’s life.
- Love regardless of whether or not their child is acting wisely and caring.
- Have good intentions for the guidance, opportunities, rewards and consequences that they give.
- Provide helpful feedback on both good and bad behaviors and attitudes.
God is doing these things for us!
The gap in a child not “feeling” the love given by a loving and wise parent is usually because the child is focused on filling “self” rather than understanding what their parent is doing for them. Their loving and wise parent is helping them build the character and maturity that will make them more successful as an adult. We do the same with God when we are focused only on this blink-of-an-eye time in this world and not the big picture of what God is doing in our lives and those around us. God is building our character and maturity so that we will have more wholesome relationships both now and for all eternity in Heaven. We need to understand that it really is more rewarding to serve others than to fill “self”.
God is focused on His love for us. Just like a loving and wise parent, He gets joy when we trust and follow what He tells us because He knows it will yield a more purposeful and rewarding life both now and in eternity. He is preparing us for Heaven which will be an awesome place to spend eternity because everyone there will have wholesome relationships as a result of learning to trust Him.
- Zephaniah 3:17 The LORD your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save; He will rejoice over you with gladness; He will quiet you by his love; He will exult over you with loud singing.
- 1 John 4:18-19 There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love. We love because He first loved us.
- James 4:2-3 … You are envious and cannot obtain; so you fight and quarrel. You do not have because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend it on your pleasures.
- 1 John 3:16 (proper response to John 3:16) We know love by this, that He laid down His life for us; and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.