Picture in your mind someone you find hard to love. How can you learn to love them? Before we can love others, we first need to feel and understand how deeply God loves us. Paul wrote: ‘I pray that Christ will be more and more at home in your hearts, living within you as you trust in him. May your roots go down deep into the soil of God’s marvellous love; and may you be able to feel and understand, as all God’s children should, how long, how wide, how deep, and how high his love really is; and to experience this love for yourselves’ (Ephesians 3:17-19 TLB).

Notice the words ‘feel…understand…experience’. God wants us to feel His love, and He wants us to understand His love. First John 4:19 says that we love God because He first loved us .Unloved people are often unloving people, so it's important that we feel loved by God. When we don’t feel genuinely loved, we don't feel like giving love. So, first, we have to experience God’s love for ourselves. Jesus said, ‘Love one another as I have loved you.’ During our worst acts, and in our lowest moments, Jesus loves us.

Knowing we’re loved by Him gives us value and security; it also enables us to risk loving others. All God asks is that we’re willing to love, and He’ll supply the power to do it. ‘The love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us’ (Romans 5:5 NKJV).

What Now?

Read through some Bible verses that speak of God’s love for us. As you read and meditate on them, ask God to fill you with a deep and powerful awareness of His love for you.