How to Find True Love
“We are created to be loved in a divine way that no human mind can comprehend.”
There is nothing sweeter than finding a letter addressed to you in the middle of a pile of mail. Over the past two months of quarantine, I’ve found great joy in writing and receiving letters from dear friends. As someone who is a major “words of affirmation” girl, my cup has been overflowing. I’ve been feeling such immense love from these letters that it’s made me think through what love is and what it means to truly love well. We were made by Love and were created to love.
Love has been sown into many parts of my life. I’ve seen deep, radiant love flowing in my parent’s marriage of almost 30 years. I’ve felt loyal, protective love from both of my older brothers. I’ve felt sincere, heartfelt love from many friends both old and new. I’ve fallen in love and hope to fall in love again. Many people my age dream about finding their true love. I’ve watched love from afar. I’ve even felt love in the simple lines of a music lyric from a song, or from the person holding the door for me to get into my favorite coffee shop. Love isn’t hard to find when you look for it. But love is easy to be broken when we place a weight on it that was never meant for humans to carry.
I’ve been burned by putting too much trust in the love of others. Friendship was a hard spot for me for many years. I searched long and hard for “my people.” When I looked on social media, I never felt fully satisfied. Posts of other people having a good time together made me shrivel up. I felt alone. I drained myself to the core in my honest pursuits to fulfill MY desires. In my search for deep, intimate, Christ-centered relationships, I played myself. I perfected everything I deemed to be “broken” and tried every bible study, prayed all the prayers, and sought out all sorts of wise counsel. I thought that I would finally find joy if I could just find “my people.” That was a lie. No people can ever provide that type of joy and satisfaction. I was ignorant to the only One who could truly hold my heart…the One who created it to begin with.
In all honesty, I’ve always known that God is the only sufficient love for my life. Yet, it’s taken me disappointment, heartbreak, and loss to fully comprehend the magnitude of my dire need for His love. By saying yes to His love first and to the love of others second, I’ve found freedom and untouchable peace. I’ve learned three important things in the process.
One: I love best when I know where love began.
Just yesterday, a friend of mine sent me a screenshot with the writing, “We can never know who or what we are till we know at least something of what God is.” The Bible is living proof. Jesus said the first and greatest commandment is to love God, and the second is to love your neighbor as yourself. As Jesus stands on the throne as the originator of love, we know more about ourselves and our fleshly pursuits of deep love when we look to Him. We love others best when we get to know God more.
In Romans 12 the apostle Paul commands us to love. “Let love be genuine,” Paul writes. “Love one another with brotherly affection. Outdo one another in showing honor.” In order to best love others, we must do so with the same sense of devotion that one places upon loving their family. We are called to love regardless of attractiveness or desirability. And we do this by putting our love in Him and allowing His love to flow through us. God is the only source of love that never runs dry. That’s a stark contrast to my own love tank, which quickly runs dry. We can best love those around us when we rely on His love alone. There is NO greater love. I mean it.
Yes, we are wonderfully and beautifully created in God’s own image, but we all fall short somehow. We can’t love to the full extent in which humans crave and find full complete, satisfaction. We were made to find it in God, our heavenly Creator. But we are called to love. We are called to be more and more like Him.
Two: God’s love ALWAYS has the final word.
My senior year of high school, a friend once said, “Katherine, it’s inevitable. People are going to disappoint you and you are going to disappoint people.” At first, I thought that was cynical, but now I find comfort in it. I’ve found rest in knowing that I am deeply loved, cherished, and known by a God, even though He knows I will disappoint Him. No matter how broken my path leaves me, He wants every single shattered piece. His love is unconditional and boundless. God’s love doesn’t come with a contingency plan. It’s yours whether you signed up for it or not.
One of Jesus’ first disciples, John, 1 John 4, “We love because he first loved us.” I’ve heard this verse throughout my life but spent some time mediating on it recently. The beauty lies in the fact that Jesus loved us before we gave Him a reason to. He took on the insurmountable weight of an excruciatingly painful sacrifice for people who were never guaranteed to love Him back.
If we put our trust in Christ we are heirs to the throne. We have full access to the originator of love itself.
Three: God’s love does not depend on my performance.
I like the way Charles H. Spurgeon, a famous preacher from the 1800s, thought about the wonder of God’s love. “Each believer must, when filled with a sense of Jesus’s love, also be overwhelmed with astonishment that such love should be lavished on an object so utterly unworthy of it,” Spurgeon said. He’s right, there is no rationale behind the love that God “lavishes” upon our undeserving souls. Yet, we are supposed to receive it and be vessels to extend His love to those around us. Our love is only sufficient to such an extent because it is defined as a, “strong affection for another arising out of kinship or personal ties.” Human love is based on circumstances, thus, making it as conditional as our feelings are fleeting.
We are created to be loved in a divine way that no human mind can comprehend. It can only happen when our love is rooted in a relationship with God, through Christ. Stop searching elsewhere. You won’t find any other love like it.
I’d love to hear what you think in the comments below or by sending me an email at Katherine.stanley@comcast.net. Let’s be an encouragement to each other.