When You Don't Feel Like Loving God

“When it comes to relationships,” he said,  ”I prefer to use the word ‘passion’.  For when you are passionate about something, it’s an undying love and sensation that will withstand time.”

Now that’s a thought, isn’t it?

I had been talking to him about dating relationships, but I think the whole conversation could pertain to our love relationship with God.

Do you ever have those days when you don’t feel like loving God?  You’re not in the mood to read the Word or pray or go to church.  I think we’ve all encountered moments like this.  But does feeling this way make us bad Christians?  Or worse yet, does it mean we aren’t truly saved?

I know a girl who claims to struggle with this on a fairly regular basis.  She’s been baptized four times, is always asking for prayer for her spiritual life, because she doesn’t feel saved.
Key word there: “feel”.

What does it feel like to be saved?  Well, like many “feelings”, you can’t exactly describe it.  But passion, on the other hand, is something you can – not only believe – but see.

Passion is a fervor, an eagerness, a zeal, fire, energy, and enthusiasm.  You may not always feel this way about the LORD, but does your heart and mind long for His Words?  Does everything you do, say and think make you pause and wonder if it’s a reflection of Him?  Are you living in a way that He would be pleased with?  Can people see this passion in your life of an undying thirst for more of Him?

It’s great – to see someone who wants to be passionately in love with Jesus, to mimic Him in their every day lives and to always desire to talk about Him.  But we must also be prepared for the times when that’s not at the top of our priority list.
Because it will happen.
Why?

This means that things happen, we commit sins, we take Him for granted, we forget who we are in His eyes, and when this occurs, we tend to lose sight on the whole love aspect of our relationship with Him.

Be prepared for these seasons, where you feel like you’re barely hanging on to Him.  Be prepared for times when you don’t feel like loving Him.  It’s not the best.  It’s scary, for sure.  Our sinful nature pulls us away from Him.  The enemy uses this to his advantage and whispers to us that we’re better off without Him, we don’t need Him, life is easier without all His “rules”.  You’ll start to feel yourself slipping away.  You won’t want to read your Bible as much, you won’t pray very often, you’ll dread going to church or talking about God.
But this is where training and discipling our hearts and minds to want more of Him comes in to play.  Because it’s not about feeling one way or the other.  It’s about keeping that spark, that passion alive.

Be ready to fight.  Because love is always worth fighting for.  And honestly, loving God should be the easiest kind of love.  Why?  Because it doesn’t cost us anything to love Him.  But it cost Him His very own Son’s death.  A death that created a bridge over the chasm that separated our sinfulness from His glory.  Why do we take that for granted?  Why do we overlook His goodness and mercy?  His forgiveness covers a multitude of sins and yet we reach points in our spiritual lives where we don’t feel like loving Him?

It’s in these moments that we most need Him, though.  

And we have hope.

The passage in Romans continues… “being justified as a gift by His grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus; whom God displayed publicly as a propitiation in His blood through faith.  This was to demonstrate His righteousness, because in the forbearance of God, He passed over the sins previously committed.”