How can you really show Love to a God who is Love? ALOVE investigates.

I asked my teen cell the other day to define “love”. The responses were varied:

“Love is passion.”
“Love is passionate sex.” (giggles)
“Love is lies.”
“Love is laying your life down for your friends.” (The Christian kid.)
“Love is caring about someone and putting their needs ahead of your own.”
“Love has no colour or gender.”
“Love is snogging.”

I then asked them to imagine a universe in which God existed, and in which He asked for our love and devotion. How would we give it to Him?

(Silence) ... “Whoa. That’s a good question.”

If we buy into this Christianity thing, we are fully aware that above all else, God wants our love and devotion. “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.” How do you do that? Really, how do you actually go about loving God?

I’ve been wrestling with this lately. I want to respond to this command of God, maybe even this longing of God, with something more than singing vaguely romantic worship songs to Jesus.

I get the feeling that this is often what is meant when people talk about showing love for God. Sing the songs with gusto, close your eyes and raise your hands, don’t forget your personal devotional time, and God will know that you love Him. Throw in a mission trip for good measure, and you’re set.

That just doesn’t feel right, though. It isn’t that those things are bad, it’s just that something seems to be missing, a depth of devotion that includes emotion, but also goes beyond feelings into a place of significant relationship with God.

Sometimes it seems as if we’re flirting with God, allowing Him to be a part of selected components of our lives, but not willing to make a deep, lifelong, intimate commitment. Our faith needs to develop a devotion of marriage-type proportions. Marriage is about sticking it out with someone even when you don’t feel like it, when you’re cranky and their breath smells bad. Flirting is about the weekend parties; marriage is about the everyday peaks and valleys of life.

And it’s not a one-way process. Far from it! God’s devotion to us is completely and overwhelmingly perfect, loving and consistent. It’s a devotion that saw the Father give his Son; the sacrifice of a cross, the restoration of humanity. And God’s devotion is one that produces a new creation in us, one that shares in the nature of both God and us. It seems to me that prayer is the place where this mutual knowledge and new creation occurs.

Then comes another interesting bit. That new creation, God and us combined, is not called into existence simply to sit around and selfishly enjoy God’s blessings. That new creation is called to love God even more. How? By loving others. By being devoted to brothers, to neighbours, and to the poor. Jesus commands us to love God with everything we’ve got, and then he commands us to love our neighbours. He goes so far as to say our love and devotion for him is shown primarily by our love and devotion for the hurting and desperate and forgotten. The Book of James goes on to say that by not loving our brothers we are in fact proving that we do not love God. Heavy stuff.

So there is a dual method for giving our devotion to God. Love God, and love your neighbour. Obedience to these commands, these longings of God, is the way to show your love. And, if the mood is right, you can also sing romantic songs to Jesus.