I have claimed to love God since childhood, partly because I thought that I was supposed to, and partly because I thought that whatever insignifcant particle of belief I had was the closest to love that I would ever feel towards God. We can't possibly love Him like a friend, like a father, or like a lover. I really didn't believe I could be that close to God when I was little.

I grew older, and began to hope that there was indeed more that one could have, more relationship. Even though I hoped and believed that this was possible, and even though I would have said I loved God even more than when I was a child, I don't think I really felt an emotion towards God that could honestly be labeled love.

And it is only very lately that I think I have really felt something that can, in all fairness, be called love toward God. It certainly took long enough, because He's been in love with me since forever! But it was only tonight that I realized that for years what I felt and what I thought I felt was not love at all. Rather it was some feeling of distant, cold, impersonal, and fearful relationship with a dictator God who didn't really care about me personally because He had bigger things to deal with and bigger plans to worry about.

It's not that love is just a feeling--and we certainly shouldn't judge the reality of things in our life simply by how we feel about them--but our feelings are a part of us that God gave us, just like our reasoning and our physical senses. We are supposed to belong totally to God, so shouldn't our hearts and our emotions be totally captured by His love as well? We ought not to throw out our emotions as being part of us that is somehow less important, less godly, or less spiritual than our intellect. We should love God with all our heart, mind, and soul, not just on an intellectual level.

There is value to being able to say intellectually that you love God when you don't feel it emotionally, but if we are growing ever closer to God shouldn't we reach a point at which we cease struggling to convince ourselves that we truly love God with every part of our being, we experience Him as real, and we let real love for God flow out of that experience instead of just trying hard?

Most of us haven't addressed how we really think and feel about God, how we imagine He really is. Whether or not we think about it, we all have our preconceived notions about who and what God is, our subconscious mental picture of God. And most of us, to some degree, have got it wrong. How can we love a God that we misunderstand? For surely our misunderstandings in no way make God look any better than He really is, but rather worse. Can we face our ideas of who God is, let them go, and open ourselves up to letting God Himself show us who He is?

What if there is more, more love that God has for us, more intimacy that we can share with God, more relationship than we could ever dream of? What if we can't earn it, we can't manipulate God into giving it to us, we can't fix ourselves enough to deserve it, but God will give it to us freely? What if all that God wants is for us to stop trying so hard and let Him lavish His love, grace, healing, strength, and forgiveness on us unconditionally? What if He just wants us to see Him the way He is, and stop worrying about whether or not we have it right? What if all we have to do is rest, close our eyes and rest in the glory of who God is, the beauty, the love, the healing grace of God? What if we just let God love us, and let our love for Him flow out of that instead of trying to force it or giving up and settling for intellectual thoughts of love? What if we didn't have to settle anymore? What if we could truly live life abundantly now?