You ask God to teach you to rest in His love, and this is the very cry of every soul that longs for salvation. The heart of your prayer is a noble one, for what greater thing is there than to know the love of God and to be consumed by love for Him in return? Yet understand this plainly, for it is a matter of life and death: you cannot rest in a love you have refashioned to suit your own comfort. You cannot embrace God’s love while rejecting the commandments that flow from it. His love does not leave us as we are; it remakes us. To abide in His love is to abide in His truth, and His truth has given us clear boundaries as a shelter for our souls, not as a prison. The love of God is the very thing that united earth to Heaven, that made the Lord a servant, that delivered up the Beloved for His enemies. This love is so fierce and pure that it demands our transformation, not our affirmation of what He calls sin. If you truly desire to rest in His love, you must first lay down the weapons of your rebellion and accept the terms of His peace.
Do not be deceived by the spirit of this age which whispers that love means the affirmation of every desire. That is not the love that comes from knowledge. I have always taught that we must love with judgment, with reason, with all discernment, so that you may approve the things that are excellent. There are many who speak of love but have no knowledge, and their friendships are weak and even destructive. To love for God’s sake is to be disposed towards all men as towards brethren, loving those of the same faith as true brothers, and pitying those caught in sin, weeping for them, yet never calling their evil good. Is it love to see a neighbor’s house on fire and to soothe them with kind words instead of shouting a warning and pulling them from the flames? If you love them, you will speak the truth. The world’s idea of love is often nothing more than a pact of mutual flattery, a conspiracy of silence about sin that leads only to destruction. God’s love is different. Because He loves you with an everlasting love, He corrects you. He calls you out of darkness, not to leave you in it with a false sense of peace. The greatest cruelty is to bless a path that leads to the cliff’s edge.
You ask God to help you ignore the lies of Satan. The most cunning lie of the enemy is not to deny love, but to counterfeit it. He will tell you that love means no judgment, no standards, no cross. He will tell you that to truly love someone, you must celebrate every choice they make, even when those choices crucify the Son of God afresh. But see here the true nature of divine love: God showed His love for you not by declaring your sin acceptable, but by letting His Son die to free you from it, rather than live without you. How then can you respond to that sacrifice by clinging to the very things that nailed Him to the tree? To truly accept His love is to fall in love with His holiness. It is to hate the sin that separated you from Him. Resting in His love means resting in His commands, for they are not burdensome to the one who loves Him. If you love Him, you will keep His commandments. On these two, to love God and to love your neighbor as yourself, hang all the law and the prophets. There is no separation between loving God and obeying His design for life and marriage.
Therefore, do not merely ask God to let you feel loved while you remain unchanged. Ask Him for the greater gift: a heart that loves Him back with all its strength, a love that proves itself in obedience. The measure of love is to stop nowhere, to abound yet more and more, but always in knowledge and all discernment. Fall out of love with the world and its passing passions, so that you may fall eternally in love with God. Only in the narrow way of His commandments, which are life, will you find the unshakable rest and security of His embrace. That is how this prayer is forever honored.