How To Love Jesus More?

By Steve McVey, Grace Walk Ministries

For years I prayed, asking the Lord to help me love Him more. Have you ever prayed something like that? As I grew in my own grace walk, I began to understand the key to loving Him more. The answer is so different from what I used to believe.

In the past I would have said that to love Him more we need to spend more time with the Lord in prayer and in the Bible. I would have said that we need to spend time with other people who love Him to increase our love for Him. (I even used the illustration of how one piece of charcoal will grow cold if it is set off by itself, but in a pile it will stay red hot.) I spoke of how our love for Jesus grows through serving Him. I argued that the "service approach" to loving Jesus wasn't a fake-it-till-you-make-it type approach, but instead was a faith-it-till-you-make-it approach.

It all sounded so good, so right, but I couldn't have been more wrong. Of course, we can experience a sense of intimacy as we pray and read the Bible. We are able to be encouraged by the company of other Christians and we may find fulfillment as we serve Jesus. However, these things aren't the key to experiencing intimacy with God. In fact, you can do all of these things with great commitment and still be spiritually cold. I'm not minimizing the value of the actions mentioned above, but I'm simply pointing out that "doing all the right things" won't necessarily generate intimacy.

What, then is the key to loving our Father more? It is so simple that it's hard to believe that I missed it for so long. What is this key to loving Him more? It is to grow in our understanding of how much He loves us. That's it -- growing in our understanding of how much He loves us will cause us to love Him more.

1 John 4:19 says that "we love Him because He first loved us." Do you want to grow in your love for Christ? Then grow in accepting His love for you. Nurture yourself in the realization of His passionate and lavish grace. See Him holding you, hugging you, kissing you. Accept the reality that He is proud of you, that He adores you.

"But it isn't about me!" one person recently protested when he heard me share this truth. "No," I answered, "it isn't about you and to think that the key to your relationskhip to God is for you to love Him more puts the burden of intimacy on you, not Him. You're right. It's about Him." The essence of the gospel is that God so loved us that He gave His only begotten Son. That's the gospel. He loves you. Stop trying to love Him more and simply accept His acceptance of you and watch what happens. You'll be amazed at how much your love for Him will increase.
--Reprinted with permission from GraceVine