When Will I Be Loved?

It has been said that loneliness is a problem which has reached epidemic proportions, a problem which even social networks like Twitter and Facebook cannot
eradicate. Certainly social networks, cell phones, and email play a vital role in keeping us connected with those we know and love but they are no substitute for heart to heart conversations over coffee or dinner, or the physical contact and affection that we so desperately need and want.



Sadly, even those relationships intended to meet our need for love fall short because humans are incapable of loving without disappointing one another.
Friends and family fail to live up to our expectations or they misunderstand us altogether. Yet somehow we get so caught up in the need for approval and validation that we perpetuate the problem by settling for less than God's best for us even if that means compromising God's values and our virtue just to avoid the risk of being alone. I know this to be true because that is precisely how I lived for a numbers of years as I wondered, When will I be loved?






God created us to be in relationship with him and with others. He means for us to love him more than any human and to love others as he loves us. The Bible teaches us that:

God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them. This is how love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of
judgment: In this world we are like Jesus. There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love. We love because he first loved us.
(1 John 4:16-19, NIV

)

How can we be like Jesus if we don't love others the way he does? How can we know what love is if we don't invest ourselves in the lives of others? I believe the reason many of us fail to find love is that we go about it all wrong. Instead of loving God and others first, we seek to have our own longing for love satisfied. We don't take the time or make the effort to know the One who is love by spending time with him in prayer or learning about his love for us through the pages of his Word. Is it any wonder that our relationships are such a mess?




If we are to truly understand and experience what it means to love and be loved, we must first know God and his love and understand that only his love is perfect and unconditional. We must ask for his grace and the power of his Holy Spirit to enable us to love others as he does. Then we must dare to step out of our comfort zones, away from the computers and cell phones which we hide behind, and invest ourselves personally in the lives of others. Only when we give ourselves first to God then dare to risk loving others will we finally experience the joy of being loved.




Lonely Hearts ~ a sweet Christian Romance
The Price of Trust ~ Christian Romantic Suspense
http://www.booksbyamanda.com