Have you heard about the stories of a young couple, maybe even your parents, who met each other and then had to spend time apart in the age before cell phones and computers? They fell in love and this passion for one another inspired them to send letters to each other. Much of the letters, I assume, talk about things they are going through day to day. They talk about how much they miss each other, they write sappy love poems and they ask questions. Lots of questions. The content of their letters is fueled by a burning desire to know the other person and be known.

Jesus knows you, loves you, and wants a relationship with you.

God already expressed his love by sending His Son to save us.

Now He leaves us with a letter. A love letter burning with passion, filled with everything He wants us to read about Him. And it’s inviting us into a living breathing relationship with Him. Not something long distance.

Nobody reads a sappy love letter from their significant other searching for what their lover has to say about what they want them to do.

Instead, because they are in love, they obey one another’s expectations, and both of their expectations are built to serve the relationship and build eachother up. For instance, don’t cheat on me, isn’t really something that needs to be said in a relationship, and both partners mutually agree to stay committed to eachother. Likewise, God doesn’t want us to have any other idols, to love and serve him alone, which isn’t really something that needs to be said if we are in love with God. And if we love God, naturally we will want to obey God, because we believe that he has our best interests in mind.

Sometimes people say that they have a relationship with God and they haven’t even read the whole love letter once. Better yet, they believe things people say about the love letter they haven’t read. Their relationship with the Author is not their own. The foundation of their faith is not a love for Jesus, it’s a trust in other people. It’s something that bends and breaks and it’s unreliable. It is shifting and stirring and there is nothing to hold it together.

Let love be the foundation of your relationship with God. Experience love like no other, with a living God. What does that even mean though?

It took me a long time growing up in the church to find out that the foundation of my faith wasn’t love, because I wasn’t accepting it from God. I allowed the shame of my sin to swallow me whole until I realized that Jesus forgave me, that Jesus loved me. I read the love letter looking for what it wanted me to do, rather than what it told me about the Author.

Read the love letter, read it to learn about God. Naturally, you’ll want to do what is good and pleasing to Him, and you’ll fall in love with the main character, Jesus.