Finding Your Real Love

There is within every single person a desire to love as well as a desire to be loved. This is what makes us truly live and thrive. Sadly many go through life not ever finding this Love. But there is hope as this Love can be found. We just have to know the proper steps in finding it.

Where is real Love found? I John 4:10 says, “Here in is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us.”

Now this text starts off by saying that if you want to find Love, then here is how you’ll find it. This text then goes on to explain what not to do to find Love and then what you are to do to find Love.

But let’s first take a look at what we’re not to do to find Love. The text says, “Here is love found, not that we loved God.” So it’s saying here that if we want to find love, then it’s not found in us loving God. Now this may sound very strange when you stop to think about it.

But what does this mean that Love cannot be found in us loving God? Well, the rest of the text clears it up for us when it says, “but that He Loved us”.

To understand what this is saying, we first need to take a look at Love from an initiation and response perspective. You see, God’s role is to always INITIATE His love towards us. And our role is to always RESPOND to God’s love.

This is clearly seen in I John 4:19, “We love Him because He first loved us.”

In other words, God initiates His Love towards us. And as we see God’s Love for us, Love awakens in our hearts, leading to emotional and spiritual healing and we respond to loving God with this Love.

So God always initiates Love to us and we can only respond to His Love. This is the true gospel. And this is how we find real Love.

Now human love is both selfish and conditional while God’s Love is unselfish and unconditional. We can easily find human love as this is easy to do. But human love does not satisfy the soul.

Real Love or God’s Love is different in that it satisfies the deepest longings and desires of the heart. And wherever unconditional and unselfish Love is seen, we can know that that Love was given by God.

Now, we cannot on our own initiate real Love. We can only respond to real Love. And as we see God’s Love for us, Love will begin to awaken within our hearts. And there will be a real Love in our hearts where once there was only human love.

And when we have this real Love in our hearts, we will then be able to Love God in return with this real Love.

But not only that, when we see God’s unselfish and unconditional Love for us, real Love will be awakened in our hearts and we will be able to Love others with this real Love as well.

Now God has already initiated His Love towards us. We just have to be purposeful in discovering this real Love amidst all the lies that is covering this Love up.

I created this diagram so you can see how to find real Love: God has already initiated Love towards us -> We see God’s Love towards us -> Love is awakened in our hearts -> We respond to God’s Love by Loving Him with real Love -> We also respond to God’s Love by Loving others with real Love

Knowing how to get this real Love is the foundation of true healing, especially emotional and spiritual healing. And loving others with this real Love is also the foundation of all healthy relationships.

All relationships that are founded upon selfish and conditional Love is doomed to suffer. But all relationships that are founded upon unselfish and unconditional Love is destined to thrive.

Maybe at one time, you wanted a relationship with God and you were told that you needed to love God and have a relationship with Him. So you went out and worked at you loving God. But you have since realized that you still struggle with your relationship with God.

The problem is that you cannot work at you loving God. You can initiate human love towards God but that is so filled of selfish and conditional love that your love for God will waiver and go up and down like a roller coaster.

Trying to love God and even trying to force ourselves to love God doesn’t work. We cannot grit our teeth and clench our fists and use our strong will power to love God. This is still just us trying to initiate the love in our relationship with God, without achieving true emotional and spiritual healing.

In fact, all false religions are founded upon the false teaching that we must initiate love towards God or the gods. And if we do initiate love towards God or the gods, then they will respond by loving us back in return.

This is also the false teaching of righteousness by works found in all false religions where one believes they must initiate love by doing good works first and then God or the gods will respond by loving them back and blessing them because of the good works they’ve done.

But the only way for us to truly love God is by first seeing how much God loves us with His Love. And as we see God’s love for us, this will awaken love in our hearts for God and others, leading to emotional and spiritual healing. And with this Love in our hearts, obeying God and serving others will become a natural response.

This is so foundational that if we get this wrong, our spiritual houses we’ve built will come crumbling down when the storms of life hits. This is why it is so important to have a correct understanding of this truth.

We will end with the same text that we started with. “Here in is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us”

If you want to find Love, this is how you find it. You don’t find it by you Loving God first. But instead, you find it by seeing how much God Loves you.

And as you do this, Love will awaken in your heart and you will begin to truly Love God with a passion, as well as Love others with this same unselfish and unconditional Love.

This is the type of Love I want to experience more and more every day. How about you? 

-Keala