HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, September 28, 2024 – The guiding question, for us as born-again believers, shouldn’t so much be “Do you love God?” but “Do you let God love you?”

Yes, of course, we love God. Our love for God goes with the territory of being a born-again believer. We don’t have ask ourselves or question ourselves about that. We love God because we’re born-again.

Still, loving God doesn’t necessarily mean we let him love us to the extent that he wants us to love us. Many of us put limitations on how much we’ll let God love us. How do we do that? By excluding him in our everyday decisions, like when to get up and when to go to bed, or what to eat, or what to wear. Maybe we let him guide us which verses or chapters or books to read in the Bible, thinking that’s his area of expertise and we should always defer to him in those matters, whereas “whole wheat or white?” should rest entirely on our own unguided decision.

But God wants to be there, too. He wants to advise us on our bread choices, noting that white bread toasts up nicer than whole wheat, but whole wheat makes a sturdier sandwich. He wants to show us the benefits of giving into heavy eyelids even when it isn’t our usual bedtime and the rewards of getting up when you wake up, rather than just rolling over and going back to sleep.

Jesus said that he always did that which pleased the Father, but Jesus couldn’t have known what pleased God unless he asked him, unless he invited him into every aspect of his daily rounds, not just Bible-reading or church-going.

God wants us to let him love us inside and out, upside and down, and every second of every minute of every hour of every day. But he’ll never impose his love on us or presume that we’ll let him love us even as his children; we need, like Jesus, to purposely and willingly open ourselves to God’s love.

And how do we do that?

Through prayer.

Prayer, as we know, is simply talking to God. It’s not a recitation or a script. You don’t have to do it on your knees or on your face or with your hands clasped or raised. You just talk to God the way you talk to anyone else. He’s your Dad, and he’s always with you through his Spirit, waiting for you to acknowledge him and engage him. This is how you open yourself more and more to God’s love, like Jesus did, and how you learn “always to do that which pleases the Father”, like Jesus did. You welcome God into every nook and cranny of your life – you close him off to none of it – and then your floodgates open and his love rushes in. This is the abundant life that Jesus promised us – not abundance of material wealth, not abundance of years, but abundance of spiritual wealth, through the overflowing of God’s Holy Spirit in everything we do and are.

This is how we let God love us the way he wants to love us. Talk to him all the time (“pray without ceasing”) and follow his advice without question. If he says take the white, take the white; if he says take the whole wheat, take the whole wheat. Don’t lean on your own understanding or that of the world. Don’t do something this way or that way simply because you’ve always done it like that: Ask God to guide you each and every time.

Love God, yes, because being born-again you cannot not love him, but even more importantly let him love you.

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“Call unto me, and I will answer thee, and show thee great and mighty things, which thou knowest not.”

Jeremiah 33:3