How to Feel Loved by God

It’s easy to hear and believe in my head that “God loves me,” “Jesus loves you,” or even a Bible verse about the love of God. It’s one thing to read it and know it. It’s another thing to feel it and experience it.

What is God’s Love?

Feeling loved by someone is an overwhelming and comforting experience. For someone “in love,” they are overcome by the warm fuzzies and deep affection for the object or person of their heart’s desire. They want to be with them, share life with them, tell them things only they want the other person to know. How can our Creator possibly want and have this with His creation?

The way we know what love is, is because we were created by Him who loved us first. We may not have experienced that love from Him directly, but in life we know the precious, tender, loving care of a mother toward her child, or brotherly love, or romantic love, or agape (unconditional) love.

C.S. Lewis wrote the book The Four Loves to distinguish and explain the four types of love – eros (romantic), philia (brotherly), storge (parent or “like-fulness”), and agape (charity, selfless).

I don’t know if you’re like me, but agape – charity – sounds like the least emotionally invested. I don’t get how giving out of benevolent kindness without asking for anything in return is more powerful and can be felt as deeply as romantic or brotherly affection.

Responding to God’s Love

I struggle with this kind of love because it is God’s signature love – and I’ve only ever really known it as a motif for the song “trust and obey”… you know, there is “no other way, to be happy in Jesus, but to trust and obey.”

Who is enamored or captivated by a duty or obligation of service to God? Yet the Bible instructs us that to love God is to obey God. (1 John 5:2)

I struggle with that, because my head agrees it’s true, but my heart is tempted and weak, doubting that I should love God by “doing.” It wants to avoid legalistic Christian rules and laws.

Valid enough, but the actions speak so much louder than words.

I can say “I love God!” or tell God “I love you!” and really be deceiving myself, where my life is not surrendered and walking in the light with Him.

And therein lies the question: How can I love someone I don’t really know – since to “know” God is to have a relationship of trusting and obey Him?

Knowing God’s Love

Adam “knew” Eve. To “know” someone in that Biblical reference and sense is to be the most intimate as possible with them. God made us humans to be sexually intimate with each other. So to “know” each other means Adam and Eve were sexually intimate.

With God we are intimate with Him in walking with Him in the Spirit. We converse with Him (prayer), experience Him in reading His words (the Bible), and experience His power and presence in life (through His Holy Spirit).

To know God is everlasting life. (John 17:3) So to know God and that God is Love, is to be able to have everlasting life and know what Love is.

Being loved by Love (God) is the sensation I want to experience. And not just “know” in my head.

To feel Him carrying me on his chest, to sense His heartbeat, to hear Him singing over me like a Father over their child. I am in awe to contemplate that kind of love from my Creator when He’s also created a universe and 10 billion other souls like mine that were created for that kind of relationship too.

But He cares about me, individually. That He would call me by name, specifically show Himself to me, prove He exists and loves and cares about every detail, all amazes me and leaves me scratching my head.

How?

Why?

Dwelling on God’s Love

To dwell on His love and know He wants to spend time with me, speak to me, captivate my heart in the most intimate way, secures my attention and attracts me to Him.

What kindness!

What thoughtful intent!

I am beyond understanding it, but I trust He loves me with such a love. He says it in His word (John 3:16), He showed it in His Son (Jesus’s life and death), and He shares it with His Holy Spirit (the senses, both natural and supernatural).

Do you sense or understand this love in your mind yet? Furthermore, what might you say to the one Person that chose to die for YOU in your place?

Do you thank your Savior?

Do you do something FOR Him in return?

Do you tell others He did it for you AND them too?

How do you respond to this knowledge of love?

Experiencing God’s Love

Then, to feel His love, talk to HIM. Tell HIM how that makes you feel  – cognitively and intellectually. That you are befuddled, confused, amazed, surprised, shocked, etc.

Whatever you think it makes you realize, and then let that feeling of awe and surprise, or confusion and misunderstanding be an honest response.

Don’t hide it or run from it. Tell Him about it and that you want to FEEL and EXPERIENCE and KNOW His love personally. Ask Him to prove it in a tangible way. See what happens.

I’ll take a guess that what happens next is that you’ll start to feel it. Deep calls to deep. (Psalms 42:7)

Quiet yourself in that moment and open up your heart to His still small voice that wants to speak to you personally.

If you hear His voice, listen for your name.

He calls you by name and will want your heart. Give Him your heart! Have Him heal it!

Have Him smother you in His perfect, cleansing, pure, agape love and KNOW that you KNOW God is real, God cares, and God loves YOU…just the way He made you.