"I do not love You, Lord"

God loves usI apologize for the long pause I had from blogging these past months. I moved to a new place so I've been incredibly busy and still am. So in the midst of my busyness. My sister sent me a message telling me, "I think I do not love the Lord," and there she was in the middle of her stay in an intensive Bible truth and character training. I wrote her back, "Did you mean you do not love Him enough?" Few minutes later, she replied, "No, I mean like I don't."

Then we decided to pick up the phone and have a little fellowship while she was roaming around the grocery store and I was in the parking lot of another grocery store in another part of the country. I asked my sister to clarify what she meant by not loving the Lord, and she explained how suddenly it hit her that she may love the Lord because she wanted something from Him. As I was listening to her, it dawned on me how often I felt like "I don't love the Lord" myself. Yup, actually it so frequently happens that it has stopped being a discouragement to me.

I told my sister, "It's okay. We will always feel short in loving the Lord because we are always looking back. Yet our love for the Lord grows and matures." Just like little children, oftentimes children's love is motivated by needs. They love you because they need you or need something from you. That is why they cannot have a spouse because they are not mature enough to love a husband or a wife.

Human love matures with growth in life. With time, we gradually learn to give in our loving, to self-sacrifice in our loving, and so forth. Love grows. Likewise, the more we grow in our spiritual life, we will soon realize how childish and selfish our love toward the Lord has been thus far. But it's okay because back then, we were simply not as mature.

The ultimate truth is no one loves the Lord in the way the Lord wants us to love Him. 

The Lord is our loving ability and our loving element. Without Him, we cannot love Him back. Nevertheless, our love toward the Lord will grow deeper as we spend more time with Him. If we keep looking back we shall realize how we always fall short in loving Him, but that's okay, that means our love has grown a little bit more at that moment in time. So my sister and I simply concluded that we truly need the Lord to love Him in a proper way. We ended our phone conversation feeling more encouraged to go on in our walk with the Lord Jesus.

1 John 4:19,
"We love because He first loved us."
That was the highlight of my day today. Thank You, Lord, that You loved us first and You have poured out Yourself as love into our hearts that we may love You back.

Comments

  1. 1 John 4:19 !!! We need more touching of God's love FIRST.

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  2. Dear Katherine,

    I was very touched by your conversation with your sister. It is so true that we need more touching of God's love FIRST. I am so encouraged. In His love I can love Him and I can love you and all of the brothers. Thank You again Lord Jesus for loving me. Truly in myself I am not worthy of anything, but in You I am worthy to be called a child of God.

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  3. Dear Sharon, Michael, Aharon,

    I'm very glad that you enjoyed my little post this week. May the Lord continue to impart Himself as love into you and all of us.

    It's quite amazing how we need Him to love Him, simultaneously deep within we know that unless we love Him to the uttermost, we will continually feel something is missing. What a mystery. It's like an innate need that we have to love the Lord Jesus with our whole being. We love You, Lord Jesus.

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  4. There is no love in us to love the Lord. Just the love that God puts in our hearts. Then we love Him with his love. This is a fact.

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  5. Katherine,

    I was also touched by this post, particularly about the immaturity of our "love" for the Lord...often seeking something in return. It's true. The most self-sacrificing love is what captures us and touches us deeply, enabling us to love in return. Praise Him that He first loves us!

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  6. Thank you all for your comments. It's very encouraging to read how we're all the same. We need the Lord to love Him back. We need the Lord to appear to us, to captivate us with His love. Eventually we love because His love has conquered us.

    Lord, deep down we love You. Even though many times, we don't act like it, woo us, court us, conquer us until we cannot help but love You more.

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