Love Without Strings
“And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment.” Mark 12:30
Love without strings. No strings attached. Unconditional love. We yearn to receive it from others. We strive to give it to loved ones. We speak of how God loves us unconditionally. What’s the common denominator when we think of unconditional love? Us. It’s all about us, isn’t it? How often do we step out of our us-centered lives and look at love without strings from a different perspective? The most important perspective. The Lord’s.
There is no more important love in the universe besides God’s unconditional love for us than the unconditional love we are commanded to give Him. But how many of us have considered our love for God must be a love without strings? We are commanded to love God UNCONDITIONALLY, and to demonstrate our love in faithful, ongoing worship, reverence, honor, obedience, and service. But some of us are too consumed with ourselves and others when we consider unconditional love to contemplate and put into practice loving God unconditionally. How many of us love God conditionally, if we love Him at all?
I spent years thinking of unconditional love only in the context of wanting it from others, knowing how terribly far short I fell in giving it to others, and at last finding the amazing unconditional love of God. Even when I started to realize God’s love for me, I was too self-consumed to consider whether I was loving the Lord unconditionally – until the Spirit of God moved upon my heart and brought this whole idea and message to my attention. By that time, He had taken a sledgehammer to my hardened heart and began to teach me how to love Him – faithfully, and forever.
Nowhere in the Bible does God tell us to love Him only when we get what we want, when life is easy, when we feel like it, when things get better, when dreams come true, when we win the lottery, get housing, get out of jail, a loved one recovers, get a job, answers to prayers, a healing, a baby, a spouse, etc. There are NO conditions in God’s command for us to love Him. Yet how many of us have turned our backs on God, removed ourselves from Him, distanced ourselves from Him, chosen idols and false gods over Him, lessened our faith in Him, stopped praising Him, quit church, stopped studying the Bible or refused to study it at all, neglected to worship Him, stopped telling people about Him, stopped praising and worshiping Him, cursed Him, raged at Him, and/or stopped or limited spending time with Him because we placed conditions on loving Him? How many have refused to love Him at all? Time to make a change?