February is the season of love. Leading up to Valentine’s, stores overflow with valentine cards, chocolate candy in red heart boxes and flower bouquets. And of course, the movie channels trot out all our favorite romantic flicks.

One of my favorite movies is “Sabrina” — the 1995 remake with Julia Ormond and Harrison Ford —  because it beautifully reveals the power of love to awaken, transform, and motivate us.

Sabrina, the wallflower chauffer’s daughter, grows up on the Larrabee Estate with a huge crush on playboy brother David Larrabee. David is charming, eye candy, and the self-centered life of every party. Sabrina is a little afraid of stuffy older brother Linus Larrabee, who seems indifferent to personal relationships in his obsession with advancing the family’s multi-million-dollar corporation.

When the story begins, all these characters have lived around one another for years without truly knowing each other. By the end of the movie we see Sabrina’s heart awaken to a true love for Linus, replacing her girlish crush on David; Linus discovers the neglected corners of his heart, and stunned to discover he loves Sabrina; David the playboy becomes David the reliable, growing up quickly when he chooses to love others more than himself. Loving and being loved changes everyone in the story in profound ways.

Of course, if you’ve lived on the planet any time at all, you know life and love doesn’t always turn out like it does at the movies. We don’t always get our happy ending, yet the hunger to experience a great love that makes us come fully alive, never goes away.

That’s because God made us this way.

By your very design — made in His image — you are meant to live and thrive through loving and being loved, in ways that awaken, transform and motivate your whole being. And not just by other humans.

The Divine Love Story

One of my favorite subjects as a Christian teacher is the love story that God the Father calls us to share with him. The New Covenant of Christ is a call to relationship between God and His people that he calls throughout scripture “a covenant of love.”

Covenants are unions of mutual commitment. In the New Covenant the Lord invites us to a relationship of reciprocal love: God loving us with all His might, and we loving God with all our might. We were all thrilled once to learn that “Jesus loves me,” but that’s only half the story. Jesus affirmed this when he answered the teacher’s question:

“‘Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?’ Jesus replied: ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment.'”

Matthew 22:35-38 (NIV

As wonderful as God is, Christians struggle with loving Him for real

In discussion and theory, most Christian believers affirm the importance of loving God. Yet many struggle with believing they should actually feel God’s love. In fact, the church has spent hundreds of years denying all emotion in the walk of faith. I’m pleased to see that the age of leaving emotion out of our Christian experience is over. Our God is a Person of deep emotion, and again, He made us in his image.

Additionally, Christians often find it even more difficult to genuinely love God in a way that the whole heart actually feels. I know, because I was one of those many years ago.

I felt convicted that I didn’t love God like Jesus said, and I had no clue how to make my heart feel that way. But my conviction included the belief that the Greatest Commandment wasn’t meant to be just something we do “by faith and confession” apart from a heart full of genuine love and affection. The Word of God is full of clues that God is indeed looking for the real thing; that He is a real Person looking for real love from his redeemed ones.

God is the Father looking for true sons and daughters who genuinely love Him

Scripture tells us that God’s plan wasn’t just to save us, but to become a father to us:

“For we are the temple of the living God; just as God said, ‘I will dwell in them and walk among them; And I will be their God, and they shall be MY people.  Therefore, come out from their midst and be separate,’ says the Lord. ‘And do not touch what is unclean; And I will welcome you. And I will be a father to you, And you shall be sons and daughters to Me,’ Says the Lord Almighty.”

2 Corinthians 6:16-18 (NASB Strong’s)

This Father is looking for a genuine love relationship with His redeemed children, not just be the Lord of a group of people who follow His rules. This Father is seeking true sons and daughters who adore him, admire him, need him, long to please him, and can’t bear to be apart from him.

It’s not that God is needy in the way a human soul is needy, but that God knows the power of authentic love to awaken, transform and motivate. Just like every good love story reminds us. In fact, we all need to be deeply loved, but even that doesn’t make us fully alive. That happens when we deeply love in return.

Salvation alone vs. a real love story with God

Frankly, you can be grateful for your salvation without loving God, and you’ll still go to heaven. Does that shock you? Millions have done it. But I don’t recommend it, and here’s why: loving God God with all one’s might is the key to experiencing all the best promises God has given. That “abundant life” promise doesn’t magically come to all who receive Christ. It is materialized by being firmly rooted and established in God’s love — His love for you, and your love for him — just as the Apostle Paul prayed in his Ephesian letter:

“For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name. I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. 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 3:14-19 (NIV)

It’s all there: the fatherhood of God, the power of the Spirit in you to help you become rooted and established in a love relationship with God, which leads to the fullest measure of His life in you. And Paul says clearly that he wants you to experience a love that surpasses all you think you know about God. It is a matter of the heart, not the head.

The rewards of loving God with your whole being

A genuine, reciprocal love shared with God is the cure for dry-toast religion. It nourishes your spirit like nothing else can. It awakens all the best God has deposited in your being. It keeps you safe in God’s arms when life hurts. It heals your broken places and opens your eyes to God’s presence in your life.

I know there are so many questions about and seeming obstacles to entering a love relationship with an invisible God, who is, after all, GOD. But I know from experience this is the greatest treasure of becoming a Christian, and it is within your reach. This kind of love isn’t reserved for a few favorites of God’s; it is available to all who believe and seek to find it. (Though the key to becoming one of God’s favorites is seeking Him in this way.)

There is no greater subject for us to learn, because loving God and being loved by God is God’s plan for abundant life for His redeemed sons and daughters.

Tonia

My journey of learning to relate to the Father, Son and Spirit reveals some priceless lessons about love, which are the subject of Rooted & Established In Love: The Power and Purpose of The Greatest Commandment.  If you struggle with loving and being loved by God, this book will help you!