How to Love God Better
We are all guilty of taking God for granted at one time or another. But He is a restorer. He wants to have a relationship with you that is new, exciting, and beautiful. God is the God of new things!
Welcome to the 74th issue of The Aim and Soar Life, a weekly newsletter about faith, personal growth, and lifestyle that provides actionable, relatable, and biblically rooted content to help you live abundantly and GROW YOU. GOD’S WAY.
Happy Sunday!
We are rocking and rolling with our theme for the month, A Better Love.
Have you ever been in a romance that became stale? Maybe you still loved the person, but those initial sparks that rocked your world in the beginning and had you looking all starry-eyed had long since faded away. And from the way it looked, they weren’t returning anytime soon.
Did you begin to think about how you could get that spark back, or were you ready to jump ship? Find a new love? Start all over again?
No matter what your answer was to any of the questions I just posed, we can’t handle our relationship with God the same way we do with people.
So, what happens when you allow your relationship with God to grow stale?
You know how it goes. You stop getting up in the morning to spend time with Him like you did when you were a “new” Believer, and your life is so hectic with work and family responsibilities that you barely pick up your Bible anymore. Your prayer life is stuck somewhere between weak and non-existent—except for emergencies—and your worship is lackluster at best.
I have been guilty of a few of these things myself. I can be the queen of “busy” at times, making room for everything else, instead of being more intentional with my time.
But there’s one thing I know for sure, when the relationship between us and God becomes stale, the “stink” is on us and not Him.
God has already proven His love for us! He demonstrates His love each and every day we awaken to a new morning. He has not changed, nor has His love for us changed. Furthermore, Scripture tells us that nothing can come between or interfere with the love God has for us.
39 nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Romans 8:39, NKJV
How should we respond to this kind of love? Well, Jesus told us to love God with everything in us!
37 Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’”
Matthew 22:23, NIV
If you read Matthew 22:23 again, you won’t find any room for staleness. Jesus is saying to us, “Give me everything you’ve got!” (my paraphrase).
When we get stuck in a stale rut, we need to love God more. Give more of ourselves. Surrender more. Trust more.
Here are 2 practical ways you can love God Better:
1. Come Clean (Confess)
If you’ve been hanging out with me for a while, you know that one of the things I’ve said more than once is that we must learn to “come clean” with God.
When we are off the mark of where we should be, God already knows the reason why. But He wants YOU to understand why.
Make it a practice to confess often. Scripture tells us that if we confess our sins, God is faithful to forgive our sins and cleanse us! That is some shouting material right there.
9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.
1 John 1:9, NIV
You can’t be in an honest, loving, relationship with God if you aren’t willing to admit your shortcomings and your sin. Whether you have unconfessed sin in your life or are suffering from what I call the “Martha Syndrome” (busybodying when you need to be spending time with the Lord), God wants you to bring it all to Him.
Let God know what you’ve done and tell Him that you want to be closer. He will restore your fellowship with Him.
It’s that simple.
We are all guilty of taking God for granted at one time or another. But He is a restorer. He wants to have a relationship with you that is new, exciting, and beautiful. God is the God of new things!
See, I am doing a new thing!
Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?
I am making a way in the wilderness
and streams in the wasteland.
Isaiah 43:19, NIV
2. Discipline Yourself
Life is hectic. If you are like me, you have a bazillion things that need your attention. All. The. Time.
You have to make time for the most important things in your life.
If you don’t, you will find yourself tending to things and giving attention to things that don’t matter as much in the grand scheme of life.
The dishes can wait. Dinner can wait. The kids can wait. But your time with God can’t wait.
We must learn to discipline ourselves to do what needs to be done.
Time with God is a must. Reading your Bible is a must. Studying the word is a must. Praying is a must.
In my quest to become a healthier version of myself, I’ve worked with physical trainers and read a lot of articles on how to become fit and healthy.
One thing that seems to be consistent in my readings and with trainers is that if you want to be healthy and look a certain way, your eating and exercise can’t be based on what you “feel like” doing. It’s got to come from a place of disciplining yourself to eat right and exercise whether you feel like it or not.😂
That’s even more true for disciplining yourself Biblically by regularly practicing spiritual disciplines.
It’s not a matter of feeling like it. Life will always get in the way. But the more we practice praying, meditating, and studying the word, the closer we grow to God.
We surrender. We give more of ourselves. We look forward to the sacred time we spend with Him. We are joyous in our hearts for the opportunity to worship and praise Him.
The more we practice what we ought to be, the more we become what God wants us to be.
The more we practice what we ought to be, the more we become what God wants us to be.
24 Do you not know that those who run in a race all run, but one receives the prize? Run in such a way that you may [a]obtain it.25 And everyone who competes for the prize [b]is temperate in all things. Now they do it to obtain a perishable crown, but we for an imperishable crown. 26 Therefore I run thus: not with uncertainty. Thus I fight: not as one who beats the air. 27 But I discipline my body and bring it into subjection, lest, when I have preached to others, I myself should become disqualified.
1 Corinthians 9:23-27, NKJV
Practicing spiritual disciplines will allow you to hear God (in the special way He speaks to you) clearly. You will feel His presence when you pray to Him. You will experience God’s peace.❤️
So, what am I saying? We must discipline ourselves to discipline ourselves. (Nope that’s not a typo.)
You must discipline yourself to practice spiritual disciplines.
You love God better by practicing loving Him. You achieve this by doing the things that bring you closer to Him.
Then you will experience the joy of being close to Him and anticipating Him. It will become second nature and will not be something you have to “force yourself” to do. Sparks will fly and you will find yourself in love all over again!
Peace and Love
Until Next Time,
GROW YOU. GOD’S WAY.
Sherrhonda😍
P.S.
I’d LOVE for you to meet me on the web: