Learning to Love God

My 3-year-old, Max, was snuggling in my lap and, as is his habit at nap time, he was sucking on his two fingers. Out of the blue, he looked up into my eyes and said, “I love God, Mommy.”

“Oh, really?” I asked, “How do you show Him that you love Him?”

His matter-of-fact response made me smile. “By coloring Him a picture.”

My 5-year-old was listening from the other room and joined in on our conversation. “We show God we love Him by loving other people.”

“And especially by loving the people in our family,” added my 6-year-old. I agreed with my boys, thankful they were learning this foundational truth at such young ages.

You see, I did not learn this truth as a child. I always tried to prove my love for the Lord by doing all the right things, especially by filling my mind with Bible knowledge and sharing what I had learned with others. I was thorough, faithful and sincere in my studying and memorizing of the Word, for example, passages like this one in Matthew 22:36-39:

“Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?” Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’”

And this one in Psalm 119:11:

“I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you.”

Now,  I knew it was right for me to read and study my Bible, but I was just doing it with a wrong motivation. The problem was that I had only hidden His Word in my head. It lacked the power to transform my heart, because it was not established there. My dedication to the Word may have given the appearance that I loved God, but I had never been motivated by love in my studies. I was motivated by self-righteousness as I performed my duty in an attempt to prove my love. I was doing it in my flesh [self-ways], and I was failing miserably. Despite the sincerity of my efforts and the diligence of my studies, I had fallen far short of His perfect standard—a life of love. The truth was not hidden from the Lord. He knew that the attitudes, motivations and intentions of my heart were unloving. I did not even know God even though I thought I did.

“Whoever does not love does not know God” (1 John 4:8).

But that all began to change when I learned the principles in Marilyn Howshall’ s newest book, Empowering the Transfer of Moral Values and Faith.

I discovered that I needed to learn how to love, and that God wanted me to start with my husband and children. But didn’t He know that they were the very hardest people for me to love? They couldn’t be fooled by my Sunday smile and my upbeat phone voice. They saw beyond the appearance that I put on for others to see, beyond the hypocrisy of my false personality to the selfish me, in all of the ugliness of my unloving ways. They were the ones who had experienced the deep wounds that I had inflicted day after day through my self-centered ways of relating—my sarcasm, angry outbursts, blame, condemnation, cutting remarks, shame, irritation, unrealistic expectations, impatience, intolerance, disapproval and emotional distancing.

Now wait a minute. Was I really this unloving, this sinful in the way that I related to my family? Well, there are some people who would say that I am just beating myself up and that I was never this ugly. All I can say is that either they never knew the selfish me or if they did, then my honesty about the true condition of my heart is a source of conviction to them. My husband and my children had experienced the reality of my self-centered ways. They knew the truth first hand.

I could never love God when I was not even willing to be the person who God had created me to be. He had created me to love like He loves—sacrificially and unconditionally, but I had chosen to be a source of death in my relationships. It was time for that to change. He was calling me to repent of my unloving ways and to be reconciled with my family.

How ridiculous it seems now to think that I could prove my love to the Lord by any of my acts of righteousness. How could I claim to love Him when I was not reflecting His perfect love in my own relationships? Could I really be in a right relationship with God when I hadn’t even made things right with my own family? The truth is clear:

“Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen” (1 John 4:20).

My children are young, but they have already experienced the powerful reality of reconciliation. They tell me that they like the new mommy a lot better than the old one, and I don’t blame them.

True change in my family only began to occur after I learned the truths in the book, Empowering the Transfer of Moral Values and Faith. As I apply these truths to my life, cooperating with what the Lord wants to do in me, He continues to transform my heart and to teach me how to love well and love much—beginning with my own family.

~ Christi Faagau