Do I love God if I don't "feel" love for God?

"One of the legal experts heard their dispute and saw how well Jesus answered them. He came over and asked him, 'Which commandment is the most important of all?'

Jesus replied, 'The most important one is, Israel, listen! Our God is the one Lord, and you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your being, with all your mind, and with all your strength.'"

~ Mark 12:28-30

Do you love God? Truly love him with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength?

If you answered yes, how do you know? Is it a feeling you have? Some sort of emotion?

If it is, then you are in trouble. If we define love for God by how we feel, then we will always be trying to whip up those loving feelings, or chase experiences that elicit those feelings, and feel terribly guilty if one day we have a bad day and don't feel that way toward God in that moment.

When Jesus said the most important commandment was to love God, do you think he had in mind that we were to have strong loving feelings for God everyday?

Definitely not.

Not everyone "feels" love for God

If you have attended church for many years, you may remember there was a season when worship songs began to shift focus. Singing to God and about God began to wane, and songs expressing emotion and intimacy with Jesus began to rise.

There is certainly a place for the expression of emotions and closeness with God. The Psalms are full of these expressions and many followers of Jesus appreciate emotive worship.

But not everyone.

I was the pastor of a small church when songs of emotional intimacy began to frequent worship sets. One day after church, a man in his sixties (who loved God and did his best to live with the compassion and character of God every day) came up to me and said, "I can't keep doing it. I can't call Jesus my lover or the lover of my soul. I can't express feelings to him like I would my wife. I don't feel that way about God."

Not everyone "feels" love for God like those songs express, and no one feels love for God like that all the time. If I'm honest, I don't have those feelings for God very often. Do I know I'm deeply loved? Yes. Am I incredibly grateful? Yes. Do I trust Jesus with my life? Yes. Do I resonate with songs that express emotions to God that border on romantic and amorous? No, not really.

So what are we to do?

What it means to love God

First, we need to understand what love is. When Jesus said, "You shall love the Lord your God," he used the Greek word agapé. If you remember our devotional from two weeks ago, agapé love "is a love of choice – not feelings – and is characterized by humility and selflessly serving others." So to love the Lord your God as Jesus states is not to feel love for him, but to choose to love him.

Which leads us to our second point. Jesus is very clear about what it means to love God, and he never mentions feelings. Instead he says things like:

“If you love me, you will keep my commandments... Whoever has my commandments and keeps them loves me... Whoever loves me will keep my word."
~ John 14:15, 21, 23

In other words, Jesus said that our love for God is expressed not by feelings, but by action, and the action he hones in on is obedience to his commands. Similarly, when he tells us to love our neighbour he is not telling us to have warm and fuzzy feelings for them. Rather, he expects us to love them through our actions that follow his teaching on how we are to sacrificially treat one another.

PAUSE and REFLECT

So let me rephrase that first question. I originally asked do you love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength? Perhaps the better way to ask that question is do you want to and (imperfectly) try to listen to and obey Jesus every day?

If the answer is yes, then congratulations, you love the Lord your God with all you heart, soul, mind, and strength. 

At least, Jesus thinks so.

I do my best to obey God, and my obedience is not driven by fear or guilt, but by thankfulness, trust, and yes, love. However, this love I have is not usually expressed by my feelings. It's expressed by my choice to act as Jesus teaches me to. So if you have a hard time feeling deep, loving, tender emotions for God, that's OK, because that is not the kind of love we are asked to express. 

That said, feeling love for God is wonderful, and there have been many times I have felt strong, loving emotions toward and intimacy with Jesus. Again, the Psalms are full of these expressions too. Just as we shouldn't chase emotions in worship, we shouldn't shun our emotions either. They are part of who God made us to be.

However, these feelings are not our love-God-metric. Obedience is.

NEXT STEPS

1. If you can say, "I love God," take a moment to reflect on how that love is expressed.

2. Consider the role emotions have in your relationship with God. Must they be present in order for you to say "I love God"? Are they completely non-existent? Both extremes are unhealthy. Emotions are one part of our relationship with Jesus. They have a role, but not the leadership role.

3. Pause to ask God, "How would you like me to express my love for you this week?" and set an intention (a measurable goal that can be accomplished this week) to follow through on what he says. If he asks you to write a poem, great. If he asks you to feed the poor, great. Whatever it is, doing it will be your act of love for him.