How Deep Is Your Love?
By Caroline Holding:
Love is at the centre of our relationships with one another and with God. We are so blessed to have a God who loves us without question. He wants us to reciprocate with unconditional Love for Him. Jesus says: "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength." (Mark 12: 30). God doesn't just want an intellectual relationship with you, but one based on emotion.
God has created us in His image and therefore our emotions come from Him. He feels the same emotions we do. He wants you to feel love towards Him as He loves us. He knows everything about us and loves each of us without limits and conditions. We should love God in the same way.
Spend time reading His Word and in prayer. It's how we get to know Him. It's not enough though just to simply know God, we need to follow His commandments and put His Word into action in our daily lives. In doing so, we reflect God's love for us. By doing these things, we enter into a relationship with God that will flourish based on love: "For the Lord is good and his love endures forever; his faithfulness continues through all generations" (Psalms 100: 5).
God loves each of us unconditionally and Jesus says: "My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends." (John 15: 12-13). The love that God gives us should be shared with everyone around us.
God's immense love for us, meant He sacrificed His only son so that we could be restored to Him. We need to be willing and show this kind of love to others. As followers of Christ, we shouldn't put barriers on our love. We need to accept people unconditionally and consider that everyone is valuable.
It is not always easy to love others in this way. How many of us get irritated, hold grudges and judge those around us? We must however learn to forgive and accept people unconditionally and treat everyone as important.
By loving those around you, see how your relationships with one another blossom and your relationship with God deepen: "And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge - that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God." (Ephesians 3:17-19).