Do You Feel His Love?

Have you ever been in a relationship where you and your significant other drifted so far apart where you can see that they love you but you can't feel it? They did everything a girlfriend, wife, husband or boyfriend would and should do or what you want them to do to show they love you...like check on you when you're feeling sick, message you to let you know they're just thinking about you, cook for you, give you a massage when you needed it and didn't even have to ask....but your heart didn't swoon in the moment of the niceties and you didn't feel the flutter in your tummy that wasn't gas? 😬

There was a point in time when my relationship with God was like that, and I didn't feel God's love. I knew it was there. I knew I had it and I'd never be separated from it, but I didn't and couldn't feel it. And I couldn't feel my love for Him either.

I was doing all the things for Him to love me, and our relationship to grow. I prayed, worshipped, read the Bible daily (often times multiple times a day), served Him, was at church virtually every week, tried to live righteously according to His Word, encourage others with and through His Word...and nothing. I felt numb to Him. I saw He loved me by waking me up every morning allowing me another chance to repent for things I'd done and turn away from those things and turn towards Him, the ability to spend another day enjoying my family, knowledge that He loves me, the food on my family's table and clothes on our backs...but nothing.

I was serving Him through church in a capacity of sometimes having to tell people who often felt like outcasts and unloved by God that He did in fact love them. I shared scriptures and snippets from my life to encourage and reassure them that they are in fact loved, worthy of love and was so unconditionally enamoured by God. I believe some felt it and most importantly believed it and His Word...but I couldnt feel it. Though I knew it, there was no mushy feeling in my heart or feeling that "I'll love you forever even if you failed" type love from God. And though I loved Him back, I couldn't feel that either. I didn't know what to do or what I could even do.

Then I got tired of it and confronted Him about it. And not in the perfect lamentation structure filled with reverence and truth, but the spoiled brat, entitled, "God, I'm doing all this, I know You love me, but I can't feel it and I want to, so what is going on?", sort of way....with full angry and frustrated feels and a face soaked in tears and snot pouring out my nose. And still...nothing.

See, I knew experentially God loved me because there was a point in my life (5 years ago) when life was suuuuuuper tough and it felt like it just didn't make any sense trying at it anymore, being a burden to others. My mum, who was my best friend died a few years prior, life wasn't going as planned or expected and the already difficult things were even more difficult to navigate becasue I didn't have my mum to talk to about them. And to top it off, the antidepressants I was on...well was supposed to be on, were suuuuuper expensive (well for me at least becasue my financial situation was not feeling the price or the cost of bi-weekly visits to my psychiatrist 😬). So I had the bright idea to try to hang myself in my living room with a luggage strap 😬😬😬 aaaaand nothing happened. I was pissed. I dropped to the floor and argued with God as to why He would let me be in this position in the first place, and why He wouldn't just let me make everyone's life easier. And then I felt like He said to me, "I'm not done with you yet." Which actually made me feel good, because it meant He created me for and with a purpose, and in the moment I felt like He didn't want me to die because He loved me enough and trusted me enough to fulfill the purpose He created me with me in mind.

So, when my poorly structured confrontations with God became too frustrating, I broke. Again, with my face soaked with tears and snot pouring out my nose, I told Him I had enough....that I want and need to feel Him love me. I didn't want to just read it in the bible, have people tell me or just have head knowledge. I want and need Him to tell me and to help me feel it. Flat on my face, struggling to keep my sniffles in becasue my newborn was asleep, and didn't want to freak out my husband in the other room, I flat out just kept telling God that I didn't want anything but Him, and needed Him and to be and feel loved by Him. I told Him how sorry I was for that time I tried to hang myself and all the times growing up (I had a long struggle with depression...but God) I poorly tried to overdose on pain killers, and that I should have just trusted Him.

The last time I did that, I went to bed incredibly sad, lost, alone and just really needing Him to show up for me. But when I woke up, I woke up with Ephesians on my mind. Though I poured into the bible, Ephesians wasn't even a memory and somehow didn't know existed in the bible. Though I read His Word, I didn't study it...until that morning when I couldn't get Ephesians out of my mind and searched for it in my bible app, and got reading.

Whew! The revelation, healing, freedom and feelings of love I felt when I did....whew!!!!!!! It was like I never read the words before and got a whoooooole new understanding of what God says in His Word and His love for us. I felt His love. I felt His redemption. I felt Him, in that moment pulling me out of the slimy pit of mud and mire (Psalm 40:2 New International Version). I felt Him redeeming me, calling me, reminding me that He chose me before the foundations of the world and according to the good pleasure of His will (Ephesians 1:3-5). Up until that point I felt His love in a way I could have never imagined, didn't think was possible or even for me. I felt one layer of insecurity peel off of me when Holy Spirit gave me the revelation that it truly doesn't matter what anyone else says or thinks about me because God loved me and chose me in Him before the foundations of the earth (Ephesians 1:4), which meant that I don't have to do anything to be loved by the only Living God (Jeremiah 10:10 King James Version).

I think I felt led to share all this to say that being loved is great, amazing and truly desirious. However, being loved and knowing you are loved is sooooo completely different from feeling loved, and that feeling of being loved, from the right person, like our Abba Father can be the antidote to many of our daily life's struggles such as anxious feels, intense lows, bouts of insecurity, fear and everything else. In fact, a study done by a team of researchers showed that people who felt loved had more optimism, greater feeling of purpose and overall higher levels of psychological well being than those who did not feel loved.

So, taking the time to truly seek Abba, and surrender all that I could to Him, removing the entitlement I had and lowering my walls to make myself truly vulnerable and naked before the One who would always love me deeper and more intensely than anyone ever could and would, helped me to move from just knowing I'm unconditionally loved to feeling unconditionally loved. That's how I did it, but I'd love to know how you began feeling God's love for you, and what it has been like, so feel free to share in the comments 😊

References:

Penn State. (2019, November 25). Feeling loved in everyday life linked with improved well-being. ScienceDaily. Retrieved July 24, 2023 from www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/11/191125121005.html