The Power of Loving God

We sing about loving God. We say it easily, the way we say we love a song or a meal. But what does it actually mean to love God — a Being too big, too mighty, too powerful for you to even imagine you could do Him any good?

Here is a definition that changes everything. To love someone is to give that person room in your life. It is to give someone a chance to be part of your life, to influence you and be influenced by you — a chance in your heart and in your life. Part of loving someone is to follow them, to allow them to influence you.

That is exactly how to think of loving God. To love God is to allow Him to influence you — to give Him room to dwell in you and work through you. Which is why Scripture defines God’s true children this way:

For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God.

Romans 8:14 (NKJV)

Another translation says it plainly: “The true children of God are those who let God’s Spirit lead them” (Romans 8:14, ERV). Not those who merely come to church, or speak in tongues, or once said a sinner’s prayer — those who follow, who are led, who have given God room. This is why Christianity is more of a journey than an event: we may be at different levels of following, but we must be committed to following Jesus.

The God who is looking for a dwelling place

This definition fits God perfectly, because consider what the great longing of God is: a place to dwell. God Almighty is looking for a people who will make room for Him to come and manifest Himself as God in this earth. He is looking for a tabernacle. And it is humans who give God that space — that room where God can dwell with man and impact His creation.

Surely I will not go into the chamber of my house, or go up to the comfort of my bed; I will not give sleep to my eyes or slumber to my eyelids, until I find a place for the LORD, a dwelling place for the Mighty One of Jacob.

Psalm 132:3–5 (NKJV)

That vow of David is the thing that moved God to call him a man after His own heart. And once you see this, you see it everywhere in your Bible. Why did God create Eden? A place to dwell with man. Why did He take Israel out of Egypt? To bring them to a place where He could tabernacle in their midst. When Jesus came, what was the testimony? God made flesh, dwelling among us (John 1:14). And how does the whole story end?

And I heard a loud voice from heaven saying, “Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with them, and they shall be His people. God Himself will be with them and be their God.”

Revelation 21:3 (NKJV)

Heaven and earth merged into one, God at home with humanity. So to love God is to conduct your life in such a way that God has freedom to dwell in you, with you, and through you — to heal this world and transform it. Now let’s get practical. What are the concrete ways we demonstrate to God that we indeed love Him? There are three.

Make time for God in your mind

The first is to give God time and space in your mind — reading the Bible, praying, worshiping, reading books that feed your soul — so that God can know you and you can know God. Isaiah speaks of those whose mind is stayed on Him (Isaiah 26:3).

Why does time matter so much? Because time is the currency of love. Time is what you must give up in order to know someone, and it is only someone you know that you can truly love. There is no such thing as love at first sight. There is lust at first sight, limerence at first sight, attraction at first sight — but to love someone, you must know the person. And you cannot love a God you do not know any more than you can love a man or woman you do not know.

This is the real reason for prayer, worship, and the Word — not religious duty, but knowledge that becomes love. Your prayer must be, “Lord, I want to know You, because I want to love You more.”

Ask any married or dating couple why they spend time together talking and doing things together, and you find a beautiful circle: they spend time together because they love each other, and they love each other because they are spending time together. You can spend time with someone you don’t love, but you cannot love someone without spending time with them — and the more time you spend, the more the love grows.

So don’t read your Bible or pray because “that’s what Christians do.” Pray and read because it is what you want: “God, I want to know You more.” When you do this, you are giving God room in your life — a space to dwell in here on earth, and an opportunity to make an impact in this world through you. That is what it means to love God.

Give to God

The second way is to give to God — your money, your house, your resources. Not because you want something back from God or from men, “pressed down, shaken together and running over,” but because you have passionate love for God and want to meet His purposes here on earth.

Let me be honest: I don’t understand people who claim they love God but are unwilling to give. Any time someone is debating tithing or percentage giving — having an argument with themselves, or their laptop, or their toothbrush about how much to give, what to give, whether to give — I don’t even bother debating with them. Because it is not a theological issue. It is a heart issue. It is a love problem, not a doctrinal problem.

Have you ever seen a man debating what percentage he will give to his wife or his children? The moment you see that, you know the real question is not theology. The real question is: do you really love them?

Do you want to know how much you love God? Go and look at your bank statements. Look at how much you spend on yourself versus how much you spend on God and the things that matter to God. It is possible to give without loving — but it is absolutely impossible to love without giving.

And let me be very clear: if you give so that God will give to you, you are not giving to God. You are giving to yourself — because you love yourself, not because you love God. I would rather someone give for that reason than not give at all, but I am calling us to a higher level and a higher reason: giving as an act of love. A person who gives because they love God will give whether or not God gives back — and they know God will still give to them, not because they gave, but because He loves them too.

...that in a great trial of affliction the abundance of their joy and their deep poverty abounded in the riches of their liberality. For I bear witness that according to their ability, yes, and beyond their ability, they were freely willing... they first gave themselves to the Lord.

2 Corinthians 8:2–3, 5 (NKJV)

Why is this so important? Because one of the strongest evidences of love is that you have allowed someone to become a major influence in your life — and in my humble opinion, no demonstration of love for God breaks the hold of sin’s self-centeredness and unleashes the God-nature of selfless generosity in us as powerfully as giving does. None. God at His core is a Giver. Jesus described Him as a Father who will not give you a snake for bread or a stone for eggs. He gives to both the good and the evil. He gives liberally, without upbraiding. God so loved the world that He gave — to the point of giving His own self to redeem it. No other deity is like this. Only Yahweh, the true God.

You are most like God when you are most selflessly generous. One way you know a person is becoming ever more like God is to watch how generous they are becoming.

Love all God's creation

The third way to love God is to love all God’s creation — the good, the bad, and the ugly. When a scribe asked Jesus which commandment is first of all, He refused to give only one:

And you shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength... And the second, like it, is this: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” There is no other commandment greater than these.

Mark 12:30–31 (NKJV)

A man cannot say he loves God and not love people. So pray and ask God to give you a love for all people — not just people who are like you, and not just people who like you.

To love is to seek the good of someone even if the person is not good. In fact, especially if the person is not good — because when was love most demonstrated toward us? While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. But be clear about what this love is not. Loving people is not manufacturing warm, affectionate feelings no matter what they do. It is not tolerating sin or acts that are against God. Loving people means looking past their flaws and weaknesses to see them as images of God, damaged and hurt by their sin — and being committed, as far as is safely possible, to doing them good, even when they do not perceive that it is for their good. You can accept a person without accepting what they do that is wrong. You can eat with someone and still refuse to sin with them or for them.

Jesus showed us how. When the Pharisees demanded to know why He ate with tax collectors and sinners, He answered, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick” (Matthew 9:12). Think about what a doctor does. A doctor separates the sickness from the person. He hates the disease that is destroying the patient and does everything he can against it — precisely because he loves the patient. And yet the doctor also protects himself from catching the disease: gloves, masks, precautions.

So if you love a sinner, be sure you hate the sin. If you find that you also love the sin, you are not the right doctor for that sinner. And if you hate the sinner because of your hatred for their sin — you are not the right doctor for them either.

What loving God does for you

Here is the secret underneath all of this: the greatest thing loving God does is not for God at all. When you give God room in your heart and life, you are giving Him room to transform you, to influence you, to help you become more like Him. It is you — not God — who needs your love for God.

And as you grow in this love, something remarkable happens: you become the kind of person who can host the presence of God — a man or woman with whom God can fellowship. Not as a reward for how you have lived, but because through growing in your love for God, you have matured in your ability to host Him and steward His presence and power to the world around you. You can only love the One you have known. It is those growing in their love for God who come to know their God — and those who know their God will be strong and do exploits.

Then something even bigger follows. The whole creation, Paul says, waits with earnest expectation for the revealing of the sons of God, longing to be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of God’s children (Romans 8:19–21). You can only lead others into a liberty you have experienced yourself. But when you have — then your family shall be delivered. Your community shall be delivered. People bound up and far from God shall be delivered, as they encounter the glorious freedom of a life led and influenced by the Spirit of God.

So begin where love always begins: make room. Tell Him tonight, “Lord, I want to know You, because I want to love You more.” Give Him something that costs you, for no reason except love. And this week, look for the person who is hardest to love, and quietly seek their good. You will be giving God a dwelling place on the earth. And He will fill it.