God has commanded that every human being love Him with EVERYTHING in them (Deut 6:5). The GREAT commandment supersedes all others. Sadly, in the lives of too many Christians, God’s love is unrequited.
There are some Christians who are not comfortable with the way God truly feels about them, so they come up with excuses not to meet together with Him daily in genuine intimate communion through prayer and worship. This often leads to a very dysfunctional relationship with Jesus that is more like having a crush or infatuation than the love that they are commanded to have.
Limerent Love
The field of Psychology has begun using the term ‘limerence’ to describe a type of feeling someone might have towards another in place of ‘real’ love and affection. It is a very subtle and dangerous form of infatuation. There can be an obsessive fascination and the desire to be the center of the other person’s life rather than just wanting to share the best moments of their life.
Limerence includes mood swings and feelings of intense joy and frustration. It is really a form of obsession that may seem like deep love, but in fact, it is the worst deception of love. It can turn a person’s life into a rollercoaster of misery and happiness. There is no middle ground.
For the limerent Christian, it is either the mountain top or the valley experience with God. Limerent love is most often felt by new Christians when they surrender everything to Him. At first, they can’t think of anything else but Jesus – and that is a good thing! He becomes the center of their world – for a while – until they start taking back those things they gave Him at the beginning of their walk with Him.
Yet, it is also seen in the Christian whose walk with God is completely based upon experience and their perception of how God is treating them. The person is elated, and on top of the world, and ‘blessed’ by God when they are getting their own way. However, when things stop going the way they want them to go, they get very upset, and depression takes over as the victims ‘mantra’ of ‘why me’ consumes them.
Limerence can cause various physical reactions to take place and cause the person to feel ecstatic when they believe that they are being touched or ‘blessed’ by God such as trembling, weakness, and stammering.
Conversely, the person can feel deeply rejected and worthless when they don’t ‘feel’ His presence or things aren’t going the way they planned.
In genuine love, a person sincerely loves another irrespective of whether there is any reciprocation. A person living in limerent love only feels happy when they think it is being returned. Unlike genuine love, limerence offers no real intimate affection because there is no feeling that it is needed.
As long as things are going good for the limerent Christian, they are ‘blessed.’ However, there can be an intense need for constant reassurance that they are loved by God. When things start to unravel around them, they start to question everything as the ‘blessings’ seemingly dissipate.
It is easy to worship and praise God when things are going great but when things start to unravel, or life gets in the way of their times of ‘blessings,’ there can be the feeling that God has removed His hand from them because of something they may have said or done.
What happens is the fear of rejection takes hold and becomes deeply rooted within, hindering their growth and their relationship with Jesus because they never really believe that they are good enough to be used, or even truly loved by Jesus on an intimate level. That causes the person to be afraid to approach God as they become fearful that He may reject them because they are not ‘good’ - or ‘holy’ - enough to enter into His presence.
The ultimate effect is that the limerent Christian becomes satisfied with just making it into Heaven and to merely remain satisfied with the fact that God loves everyone so He must love them too. When there is the smallest sign that God has done something to ‘bless’ them, their hope rises, and they continue to hold on for the next ‘bone’ of blessing to be thrown their way.
Genuine Love
Jesus is love incarnate. Everything He does is because of - and through – love! It is the foundation on which the whole universe was created. The reason Christians should love God is because He first loved them.
Within the religions of the world, it is not uncommon to hear that the greatest thing to obtain is faith. Yet, the Great Commandment of God was not to have faith but rather, to love Him. Faith - in and of itself - is useless unless it is energized by God’s love. This love command is the foundation of Christianity. The reason God wants Christians to love Him with all their heart, soul, and mind, is because that is how He loves them!
God’s very essence is love (1 Jn 4:7-10). He has always been love, even before He created man and woman. He has always sought to have a close relationship with His children. Human Beings were made for this love. Their entire story is wrapped up within it. Love is the energy of life and is why humans were created. Love is their eternal destiny.
Christianity is the only religion that sets forth the Creator of the Universe as love. All of creation resounds with the proof that God is love. Within Him is found all the fullness of excellence, beauty, and perfection. He is the author of all that is good in creation. This truth is taught throughout the Bible, beginning with Adam in the Garden of Eden.
When God created Adam, He said to him, "I will make a partner suitable to you" (Gen 2:18 NIV). God was declaring the hidden purpose of His heart from eternity past. The Holy Spirit reveals the mystery of the ages is that this promise ultimately speaks of Jesus and the Church (Eph. 5:25-6:1).
God proved He is love by choosing to walk among mankind and die in their place (Jn 3:16). He now reaches out His arms in tender affection with nail-pierced hands in the purest and intimate way.
The very nature and essence of love requires that it must grow in a willing heart. Sadly, there are many who are not yet able to experience the fundamental reality that God loves and enjoys them. There are even those who would argue that God could not possibly be in love with them.
What a person believes about God is the most critical thing contained in their mind. It affects everything about them. For too many people, God seems remote, impersonal, and unknowable. Because of that, many suffer from an inability to feel forgiven, nagged by doubt and mistrust of Him. A dysfunctional picture of God results in a dysfunctional way of praying. Jesus revealed this truth when He asked;
"Which of you fathers, if your son asks for a fish, will give him a snake instead? Or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him". (Luke 11:11-13 NIV)
Those that had an earthly father who was never around when they needed him, or has experienced trauma, abuse, or extreme discipline, will have a very difficult time pursuing an intimate relationship with the heavenly Father. However, God’s love can soften the hardest of hearts and restore every broken and shattered piece of a person’s life.
Trusting-Faith Revisited
Genuine love is the natural outcome of active trusting-faith. The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit exist together and for each other as infinite love that defies human description, understanding or comprehension. Because They are love, They trust one another without hesitation and will do whatever the other asks.
The beautiful God longs to have people who will trust Him and desire to worship Him because they want to, not because He does something to make them love Him or they ‘feel’ His presence or get ‘Holy Ghost Goosebumps.’ The foundation of trust is love. In order to trust, there must be freedom. But God can’t create faith, so He put into human beings `an unlimited capacity to love and trust.
Faith is something each individual person must provide! It is based on freedom because faith requires it. Adam and Eve chose not to trust Him. The Bible says that the “righteous will live by his faith" (Hab 2:4 NIV). The Hebrew word used here for faith is “aman” where the word “amen” comes from. The righteous shall live continuously by faith. They must enter into the state of “amen” where no doubt exists.
Faith Defined
The word “faith” comes from the Greek word “pistis.” It means assurance, persuasion, conviction, and reliance upon another. The root of “pistis” is “peitho” which is a primary verb - an action word that is in a continual state of being, moving forward or reverse, never standing still. Faith, in and of itself, is dead apart from trust. Faith, without works “is dead” (James 2:17). The working of faith is trust.
One of the biggest errors that have crept into the church over the years has been the teaching of faith as if it were a thing or power to obtain or possess. Many believe that if a person has enough ‘faith,’ they can be healed of any ailment and receive all the money they could ever want.
The truth is that God wants Christians to walk in divine health, never needing to ask for healing - and He wants them to trust Him with all their money and be willing to give it all to Him. Faith is the absolute fundamental essential of Christianity. The world can’t exist without faith. It is just milk, a tricycle with training wheels in the nursery school of discipleship (Heb 5:12-6:3).
Without faith, it is impossible to become a Christian and please God. It is the fundamental element of Christianity. There is no exhausting it. God gave EVERY Christian all the faith they needed to believe Jesus is the Savior. It is God who gives them the faith to trust Him today.
Christians must learn to put on the faith He has given them just as they put on their clothes each day.
"But since we belong to the day, let us be self-controlled, putting on faith and love as a breastplate, and the hope of salvation as a helmet” (1 Thess 5:8 NIV).
Christians have the faith of Jesus!
“Even the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe: for there is no difference.” (Rom 3:22 KJV)
The “righteousness of God" is not a ‘law’ righteousness but a ‘faith’ righteousness. It comes through the faith possessed by Jesus and is imparted to all who are willing to receive. Faith, as described in the Bible, is God's gracious gift:
"For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves" (Eph 2:8 NIV).
To believe is to respond to this gracious gift, exercising the faith God offers to all. Jesus is the “author and finisher” of faith (Heb 12:2).
“For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also.” (James 2:26 KJV)
Beyond Belief
Trusting-faith is more than believing. Faith is a continual state of mind being totally secure, and it needs a subject to trust in. The subject is an individual choice. The choice one makes is the object of their faith. Faith exists no matter what their object is. God requires faith for eternal life because it is trusting Him exclusively! Having faith means a person must act as if God can be trusted!
Trusting-faith is plugging into God, and He takes care of everything else. It is like building muscle memory. The Christian must be continuously put into situations that require them to trust. The more they do it - over and over again - the easier it is to appropriate without consciously thinking about it. It must become a recurring habit pattern.
A person can choose to have faith in themselves - the created, and their own blood - or faith in Jesus - the beautiful God - and His blood. It can only be one or the other. It can’t be both. Light and darkness can’t dwell in the same place together. Never forget this simple truth - the word “trust” begins at the Cross and ends at the Cross. Every day of life, and with every breath taken, it is within the beautiful God that “we live and move and have our being" (Acts 17:28 NIV).
When a Christian lives in genuine love they live in God and their love is made complete because perfect love casts out ALL fear (1 Jn 4:16-5:5). Actively trusting God through faith becomes as easy as taking a healthy breath of fresh air. This is the primary proof of genuine requited love for God.
