God-centered Living

Most Christians would say they love God. It’s the right answer, the expected answer, and one we rarely pause to examine. But here’s the hard question I’ve wrestled with—and I invite you to wrestle with it too:

Do I love God… for God?
 Or do I love Him for what He gives me?

There’s a big difference between the two. And unless we peel back the layers of our hearts, we might never realize which kind of “love” we’ve been offering Him all along.

The greatest commandment given to us by God is to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength (Deut. 6:5, Matt. 22:37). We were made by God and for God. We were created to be in relationship with our creator and to love Him and worship Him for who He is. Not only that, we are commanded to do it perfectly. Yet to that end, we will always fall short—even as believers. We won’t perfectly love the Lord until we see Him face to face in glory. Still, if we claim to have faith, we would all say we love God. At least we know that is the correct response if anyone were to ever ask us, but do we really? Do we actually love God? Are we genuinely attracted to Christ or simply to Christianity- and whatever we think Christianity has to offer us? The question to honestly ask ourselves is “Do I even love Him at all?”.

Do we truly love God for who He is—or merely for what He gives?

Do we merely love God because He gives us the things we really love—our family, our comforts, our health, our success? Do we love God because we actually love our family and friends more than anything else, and God is simply the useful tool who puts those things in our lives? Do we love God, because He has given us nice houses, jobs, and hobbies to enjoy, but those things truly capture the utmost affection of our hearts? Do we love God, merely because living the way He instructs us saves us a lot of heartache and helps us live more well-adjusted lives? Do we view the forgiveness of sins that Christ won for us as merely a ticket out of hell? Do we actually love the Giver more than all His gifts? What is it that truly gives us our greatest joy?

All of these types of questions are vitally important to be asking ourselves, to allow us to peel back the layers of our hearts til we see clearly the actual bedrock of our feelings toward God. Ultimately, does a relationship with our God and creator really mean anything to us if there is nothing else attached to it? If all else is stripped away, and we’re left with nothing but God Himself, is that enough? If everything else in life that we love was taken from us, every gift from God and every perceived benefit that comes from following Him, and we’re left with just God, would that be enough? Could we still love God then? 

We must be honest with ourselves about all of these questions, because if we claim to be believers, we are claiming that God is the most important person in our lives. Having a saving relationship with the person of God necessarily entails loving Him. All of us who claim to have faith certainly would say we love Him. But, do we really think about what that means? Have we ever taken time to think deeply about our love for God? As an interesting thought experiment, think about what you would include in a love letter to God. What are the ways you would express yourself in trying to explain your love for God? 

To help you think about how you might go about this, let’s use an example first of writing a love letter to a spouse.

 Here is one way that you could express yourself: You could say “Honey, I love you, because you are so good to me. I love you, because you always have delicious food waiting for me on the dinner table when I come home. I love the way you always clean so diligently and help keep the house in order. I love you, because you give me shoulder massages, and those are my favorite. I love all the many things that you do for me everyday.” 

Now, on a first read, this may seem like a perfectly fine and innocent little love letter and most of us would probably be flattered to receive such a letter, but let’s think a little more deeply about it. All of these things are great, but what if the spouse were to stop doing them? What if the spouse here in this hypothetical actually stopped making dinner, cleaning, giving massages, and serving the other’s needs? Would that mean they are no longer able to be loved? We may think we want to be loved for what we do, but that’s a dangerous foundation.  It’s certainly not wrong for love to grow by action, but in no way do we ever want it to occur only by action. We are setting ourselves up to have our loveliness tied to our performance. That’s not a stable foundation—because performance is never guaranteed. It can come and go. So if the performance is absent, then so is the love. See, if we actually only love someone for what they do for us, then we honestly do not really love them. We simply love what they can do for us. We just love ourselves. 

A real marriage commitment is supposed to be based on unconditional love– covenantal love. Whether or not they always do the things we want from them, our love doesn’t disappear, because our heart is set on them. As a person. We love them. There may be many ways that our spouse shows love to us, but the love itself is not inseparably tied to those things. It exists outside any demonstrations of it. At the end of the day, we love them, because we love them. At least, we are supposed to..

Now, keeping that example in mind, let’s transition back to thinking about what a letter to God would look like. Would it look something like this: “God, I love you, because you gave me life. I love you, because you have always provided for me and kept me healthy. I love you, because you have given me a wonderful family, an amazing wife, and precious children. I love you, because you have helped me to become a well-rounded and respectable person. And, most of all, I love you, because you have made a way to save me from hell.” 

It’s a little bit of a trick question. None of the things listed in this love letter to God are wrong reasons to love God. We should love God for all those kinds of reasons. But, what if we only love God for all those reasons listed? What if the honest reality is that between every “I love” in this letter, there is really an only inserted in the middle? “I only love you, because…” Try re-reading the letter now with an “only” inserted between every “I” and “love”. And take a while to sit and ponder about your own feelings toward God.

Let your mind and heart consider their true feelings and ask yourself if your love for God is solely or mainly set on the benefits of God or on the person of God Himself. None of these reasons are wrong. But they’re incomplete. If our love is built only on His gifts, then we’ve confused the Giver with the gifts. And that’s not love—it’s spiritual consumerism.

Let us consider another couple analogies to get us thinking. 

Have you ever thought you were friends with someone, but only ever saw them in group settings—around other mutual friends? You might think of them as a friend, and say you “know” them. But then one day, it’s just the two of you—no one else around—and suddenly, it’s awkward. You realize you don’t actually know how to talk to them. Despite all the time you’ve been in the same space, you’ve never truly built a relationship. You just knew them through others.

Or imagine you go on a date with someone who shares your love for sports and fitness. You play tennis—it’s a blast. On later dates, you play basketball, volleyball, even disc golf. Everything seems to be going great. Then one day, you meet up just to grab coffee. No activity—just conversation. And suddenly, something feels off. The chemistry isn’t there. You realize you were enjoying all the activities, but maybe not the person.

It’s easy to mistake shared experiences for a real relationship. But if everything else is stripped away—if it’s just you and them—the connection often disappears. The “relationship” was being propped up by all the other stuff. And it’s easy to mistake the enjoyment of many great experiences with the joy of a person, because it was a particular person who gave us those experiences.

Could our relationship with God be like that? We think we know Him… we think we love Him… but what we’re really attached to are the blessings and benefits. Not the person of God Himself. We experience God in community with others and definitely think we love God because of it, but when we are alone by ourselves, our relationship with God falls flat. We don’t pray. We don’t share our day to day lives with God. We don’t pour out our hearts before God or cry tears of joy with God… just the two of us. 

Or maybe our relationship with God is going super well when our lives are panning out just the way we hoped. Our family is healthy. Our careers are taking off. Our lives are filled with fun and adventure and activities. But what happens when all those things fade from our lives or they aren’t there at all like we hoped? Do we still feel just as close with God? Do we pray as much? Perhaps we do pray more in those times, but what if all our prayers are simply about God giving us back all the things that we really enjoy the most– career success, family, friends, and health? Doesn’t that kind of send a message to God about the way we really feel toward Him? We’re basically telling Him that the relationship we have with Him alone isn’t enough, and we need Him to fill our lives with more blessings, so we don’t have to spend so much time just the two of us. 

Ultimately:

 We all have to ask ourselves honestly:
 Is our love for God rooted in a true relationship with Him… or in what He can do for us?

Have we built our “love” for God on group settings, familiar rhythms, spiritual habits, or community experiences—but never actually cultivated intimacy with Him personally?
 Have we mistaken the joy of things from God for the joy of being with God?
 Do we love Him… or do we love what He enables us to enjoy?

Because in the end, at the bottom of each of our hearts is one of two sentiments toward God:

“I love you because I love you… more than anything.”
 or
 “I love you because I love me… more than anything.”

It is ultimately all about God or all about us. That is the great revealer. That is the real question to be answered. And our answer tells us everything about the true state of our hearts before God.

But the good news is this: God desires to deepen our love for Him. He is patient. He is kind. And He draws us with His grace—not just to enjoy His gifts, but to enjoy Him. He is always a gracious father running joyously toward us to sweep us off our feet and embrace us– when we truly lay down all our other wants and desires and desire Him alone above all else. 

Let’s not settle for second hand affections or self-centered “love.” Let’s seek to love God for God. Not just because of what He gives… but because of who He is. 

God Himself is infinitely lovely. 

That is what was shown on the cross.

“Whom have I in heaven but you?
    And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you.
 My flesh and my heart may fail,
    but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.” Psalm 73:25-26

“I say to the Lord, “You are my Lord;
    I have no good apart from you.” Psalm 16:2

“Does Job fear God for no reason?” Job 1:9b

“And he said, “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.” Job 1:21

“Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.  And whoever does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” Matthew 10:37-39

All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise noted, are from the ESV® Bible.