Silas
Beloved of All
Your honest words about growing up without love and living with people who could not love you well have been heard, and your ache is understood. Feeling lost and wondering if God intends love for you is a heavy burden, and it is good you brought it to prayer.
Scripture says that God is love and that love is from God. Everyone who truly loves is born of God and knows God, because to know Him is to know love. One of the clearest signs of His Spirit at work in a life is this kind of love, a love for God and for His family, for brothers and sisters in Christ. This is not the same as the other loves we often mean when we use the one English word love. There is a love that is physical and self seeking, and a love that is emotional and soulish, and then there is a spiritual, divine love. That divine love is patient and kind, it endures long, it does not seek its own. It is greater than any spiritual gift and greater than any sacrifice we could make, and the one who walks in it has fulfilled the law, for love fulfills the law. Jesus summed the whole law in loving God and loving your neighbor as yourself, tying love for others directly to love for God.
The reason you can be sure God does intend love for you is not found in how others have treated you, but in what He has already done. God demonstrated His love once and for all at the cross. While we were still sinners, Christ died for the ungodly. God so loved the world that He gave His only Son to be the payment for our sins. Here is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son. That love is not caused by anything lovable in us. He loves because His nature is love. It is unconditional, it cannot be bought and it cannot be quenched. No effort to earn it makes Him love you more, He already loves you supremely. Our love for Him is simply a response. We love Him because He first loved us. When we begin to understand how deeply He has loved us, it touches a responsive chord in our hearts and constrains us to love Him in return.
Greater love has no one than to lay down his life for his friends, and Jesus did exactly that for you. His love is so deep and high and wide and long that it passes knowledge. You will never come to the end of it. His mercies and compassions do not fail but are new every morning, giving you a new opportunity each day to see His love at work.
If you have often been around people who were not capable of loving you, please do not confuse that counterfeit for real love. In our language we use the same word for very different things, and what is sometimes called love is really desire for self. Scripture gives a sober example of a man who thought he loved a woman but it was only lust for himself, and when it was satisfied it quickly turned to scorn. That is not divine love. Real love does not use another person and then move on. God designed sexual union as a beautiful gift by which two become one, and He places it within the lifelong covenant of marriage between one man and one woman. If someone claims to love you but presses hard for a sexual relationship outside of that covenant or asks you to live together apart from marriage, that is not the patient, kind, self giving love God teaches. If he truly loves you, he will wait. If you truly love God and value yourself as He values you, you will wait as well. Do not settle for a love that can be bought or that quickly fades, because true love cannot be purchased and only cheapens itself when we try.
God initiated the relationship with you. You do not have to strive to make Him love you. You are invited to respond, to abide in His love, to walk in it day by day, and to keep yourself in fellowship with Him where He can manifest that love to you. Part of how He manifests it is through His people. Pray not only for love in the abstract, but to know His love more deeply and to know the love of His family, the community of believers who love one another with His love.
I am praying for you, that the Lord will reveal to you a little more each day of the depth of His love for you in Christ, that you will know you are fully loved even now, that He will surround you with faithful brothers and sisters who show you His kindness, and that He will heal the wounds of the past where love was withheld. I am also praying that if it is His will for you to share life in marriage, He will in His timing bring a fellow believer who will love you with that patient, faithful, covenant love, and that you will be kept from relationships that would lead you away from Him. May you live in His love, walk in it, and abide in it, and may His love awaken a confident and hopeful love in your own heart.
Scripture says that God is love and that love is from God. Everyone who truly loves is born of God and knows God, because to know Him is to know love. One of the clearest signs of His Spirit at work in a life is this kind of love, a love for God and for His family, for brothers and sisters in Christ. This is not the same as the other loves we often mean when we use the one English word love. There is a love that is physical and self seeking, and a love that is emotional and soulish, and then there is a spiritual, divine love. That divine love is patient and kind, it endures long, it does not seek its own. It is greater than any spiritual gift and greater than any sacrifice we could make, and the one who walks in it has fulfilled the law, for love fulfills the law. Jesus summed the whole law in loving God and loving your neighbor as yourself, tying love for others directly to love for God.
The reason you can be sure God does intend love for you is not found in how others have treated you, but in what He has already done. God demonstrated His love once and for all at the cross. While we were still sinners, Christ died for the ungodly. God so loved the world that He gave His only Son to be the payment for our sins. Here is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son. That love is not caused by anything lovable in us. He loves because His nature is love. It is unconditional, it cannot be bought and it cannot be quenched. No effort to earn it makes Him love you more, He already loves you supremely. Our love for Him is simply a response. We love Him because He first loved us. When we begin to understand how deeply He has loved us, it touches a responsive chord in our hearts and constrains us to love Him in return.
Greater love has no one than to lay down his life for his friends, and Jesus did exactly that for you. His love is so deep and high and wide and long that it passes knowledge. You will never come to the end of it. His mercies and compassions do not fail but are new every morning, giving you a new opportunity each day to see His love at work.
If you have often been around people who were not capable of loving you, please do not confuse that counterfeit for real love. In our language we use the same word for very different things, and what is sometimes called love is really desire for self. Scripture gives a sober example of a man who thought he loved a woman but it was only lust for himself, and when it was satisfied it quickly turned to scorn. That is not divine love. Real love does not use another person and then move on. God designed sexual union as a beautiful gift by which two become one, and He places it within the lifelong covenant of marriage between one man and one woman. If someone claims to love you but presses hard for a sexual relationship outside of that covenant or asks you to live together apart from marriage, that is not the patient, kind, self giving love God teaches. If he truly loves you, he will wait. If you truly love God and value yourself as He values you, you will wait as well. Do not settle for a love that can be bought or that quickly fades, because true love cannot be purchased and only cheapens itself when we try.
God initiated the relationship with you. You do not have to strive to make Him love you. You are invited to respond, to abide in His love, to walk in it day by day, and to keep yourself in fellowship with Him where He can manifest that love to you. Part of how He manifests it is through His people. Pray not only for love in the abstract, but to know His love more deeply and to know the love of His family, the community of believers who love one another with His love.
I am praying for you, that the Lord will reveal to you a little more each day of the depth of His love for you in Christ, that you will know you are fully loved even now, that He will surround you with faithful brothers and sisters who show you His kindness, and that He will heal the wounds of the past where love was withheld. I am also praying that if it is His will for you to share life in marriage, He will in His timing bring a fellow believer who will love you with that patient, faithful, covenant love, and that you will be kept from relationships that would lead you away from Him. May you live in His love, walk in it, and abide in it, and may His love awaken a confident and hopeful love in your own heart.
