“This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son…” (1 John 4:10, NIV).

“If you love me, you will obey my commandments” (John 14:15, NET).

He was the son of a doctor I admire, incredibly smart with a full academic scholarship to his university, back for his sophomore year. He had always focused on the Lord with plans to serve Him in full time Christian service, he knew his Bible well and he worshipped regularly in college. One day he sharpened a knife and sat under a campus tree with plans to end his life. “I’ve tried so hard to love God, but I just don’t love Him enough.”

It would be wrong to place this young man’s difficulties under the category of insufficient faith. He clearly has deep psychological issues and needs help. However, his experience does bring up the question, “Do I really love God enough?” and what does that mean anyway?

Sometimes in worship services I watch those who sing with arms lifted high and rapture on their faces and think to myself (with hands at my side and concerns for my world), “If only I could love God that much.”

God clearly wants our love. Nevertheless, frequently for some, and occasionally for all, we may not feel a deep love for God.

What does it even mean to love God?

If loving God is a feeling, I fail that description for many of my waking hours when I don’t even think about Him.

One of the wonderful blessings in this life is to worship God with deep emotion, with joy and deep love—and He provides that for us, for some more than others, based on the character and personality He has imbedded in us. We should long for that feeling but realize this is not God’s measuring stick of our love for Him.

When God loves us in the Bible, He demonstrates that love through action, and rarely as an isolated emotion. God’s loving us is God pouring Himself out for our good.

Likewise, I suspect our loving God is best described as pouring ourselves out for Him. That pouring may come with a wonderful feeling of His presence or not, and that pouring is far more important than the feeling.

Mother Teresa, in her retreat notes from 1959, questions, “Do I really try to praise, reverence and serve God?” and then answers, “I want but I don’t.”

Near the end of his book Loving God, Chuck Colson summarizes his understanding of what it means to truly love God: “To believe, to repent, to obey, to be holy, to bind up the broken hearted, and to serve.”

So, with the help of His Spirit within me, I will focus not on my love for Him, but on His love for me and on my service for Him, as I continually ask from Him, “Help me love you more.”

Dear Father,

Let me love you more.

Amen