Oct 16 Fri
Who can teach me to love God?
God created me to know, love, and serve Him in this world, and to be happy with Him forever in heaven. We can perform "acts of love," such as praying to God or loving our neighbor, but such actions do not necessarily mean we truly love God. Likewise, acts of service might be done for reasons other than love. External acts do not always equate to love.
St. Basil the Great explains:
Love for God cannot be taught. We did not learn from anyone how to be happy or want to live, or love our parents or guardians. The same is true –perhaps even more so– of our love for God: it does not come from the teaching of others.
As soon as a human being is born, the faculty of reason is implanted in us like a seed, with both the capacity and the need to love.
We possess, from the very first moment, the power and capacity to love.
We have everything we need to love God. We don't have to do anything special; we simply must make a conscious decision to choose to love God.
We must love God with the love He has given us. God is love, and love is His first gift. God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.
When we discover that God loved us first, we realize that loving Him is the right response. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life.” This is the great truth that illuminates the life of a Christian and sheds light on the obligation to love God.
The fact that God loved us first means there is a love that is the foundation of our existence, a love that precedes everything we have done or will do, does not depend on our goodness or wickedness, and will always be available to fill our lives.
To love God, we must allow ourselves to be loved by Him. And allowing ourselves to be loved by God means opening our hearts precisely where we think we are self-sufficient. It means receiving His mercy where we see ourselves as sinners, His forgiveness so that we may forgive, His help to fulfill those desires that seem impossible to us, and His grace to reach Him.
Jesus Christ taught us how we should ask God for things in the Lord’s Prayer. There we say, “Not my will, but Yours be done.” This has a lot to do with the love we owe God. To love God is to want His will to be done –and not the other way around. It is to open ourselves to His will.
If you find it difficult to love God, the best person to turn to is God Himself. Only He can foster the love we need to have and show us how to express it.