Love is a wild thing. People search their whole lives for it. They sacrifice for the people they love—partners, children, parents, siblings, and friends. I’ve heard stories of people giving their savings to help a loved one start a business, donating a kidney (leaving them forever changed), or giving up lifelong dreams so someone they love can see theirs fulfilled.

Love is what our hearts crave.

Think of a vacuum at a car wash—it practically pulls itself along, desperate to suck up everything along the baseboards of your car. That’s a good picture of the craving of our hearts.

But for many of us, loving has come with pain. We sacrificed, and the one we loved betrayed us. We prayed, poured out our hearts to God, and things didn’t turn out the way we hoped. God felt far away and disinterested. Walking through these experiences, our hearts grow untrusting, and the vacuum begins to clog with disappointment and cynicism.

After a few more experiences of betrayal and loss—things the enemy so strategically provides—the vacuum becomes completely shut down. Nothing in, nothing out.

And when love isn’t provided in the way we need it, the impact shows up in how we see and interact with God and with the people around us.

Another way to say it is this: our love has grown cold. Our hearts have become hard.

So what’s to be done?

Let’s start with our life with God.

“We have come to know and have believed the love which God has for us. God is love, and the one who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.”
1 John 4:16 (NASB)

Notice what this passage says: we have come to know and have believed the love which God has for us.

When we walk through dark times and God seems absent, all our senses and feelings tell us that God is indifferent. We begin to question His love. This is the moment when we must take a few intentional steps.

The first step is to KNOW the love God has for us.
Here are a few ways to reconnect with the truth:

• Find scriptures that speak about God’s love for you. (I’ve included some at the end of this post.)
• Read them.
• Write them out. (There’s power in seeing truth in your own handwriting—studies show this helps our brains absorb information more deeply.)
• Make a list of moments in your life when God demonstrated His love. Remind yourself of what you may have forgotten.

The second step is to BELIEVE.
That’s it. Decide to believe He loves you.

Say it out loud to Him:
“God, You love me.”

Say it again:
“God, You love me.”

Then again:
“God, You love me.”

Take a deep breath and say,
“God, You love me. I believe You love me. I believe You love me.”

Take a few moments right now and talk to God:
“

God, You love me, and You tenderly take care of me. I believe You love me.”

Let your own words flow. Drink in His love.

Unclog the vacuum by choosing to believe His love for you.

Our love for others is many times deeply connected to our knowledge and belief in God’s love for us.  Start with God’s love for you.  Many times we find loving others flows out of the love from God. 

Here are a few scriptures to help you get started:

This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us. 1 John 4:10-12

 

But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.  Romans 5:8

 

For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Romans 8:38-39

 

You, Lord, are forgiving and good, abounding in love to all who call to you. Psalm 86:5

 

For great is his love toward us, and the faithfulness of the LORD endures forever. Psalm 117:2