Perhaps the most important spiritual discovery you will ever make in your lifetime is when you learn to keep in touch with what St. John of the Cross calls the living flame of love.

Love is so difficult to define. We think we have discovered it in the way our grandmother treats us, then we get our first puppy. Soon there comes the first boyfriend or girlfriend and now we truly believe that this is what it means to be loved. After several foul attempts to find love in a relationship, we marry and find out love is hard work.

God is love and God loves you. He loves you completely. His love is the love you have been searching for all your life. Once you have deeply tasted of His love, you begin to recognize others who know what it is to be loved. I remember meeting Sara in Peru. We only had one thirty minute conversation with an interpreter where she asked me an important question about her relationship with God. The rest of our time together over the two day retreat was spent in little conversation with words. She helped me with set up and clean up. We nodded and smiled and motioned our needs to each other. I got the sense that Sara was a believer who knew how deeply loved she was. I recognized the contentment in her soul. I later asked about where she lived and discovered that she dwelled in the shanty towns I had visited earlier in the trip. But she was so different from the other women in her neighborhood. It was striking to notice that the women at our retreats from the poorest communities seemed distant to their American visitors. They looked away from us and made few attempts to communicate in our broken Spanish as other women. What made Sara more confident was not that she had any more belongings or spoke any better Spanish than the other women. What made Sara different was that she had been able to grasp on a deeper level that she was one dearly loved by God.

When you know you are loved by God, it solves so many spiritual dilemmas. For instance, it helps you forgive yourself. It keeps you from searching for love from the world. It makes you want to read God’s Word and pray to Him. It causes you to demand less from your relationships.

Jesus spells it out for us in John 15:9. As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you. Now remain in my love. You remain in God’s love when you make time to open His Word each day and grasp the message He has for you. You remain in God’s love when you go into your quiet place and talk to Him like your Father. You remain in God’s love when you confess your sins and know that you are cleansed by doing so. You remain in God’s love when you are able to acknowledge when Satan is tempting you and you reach out to God’s love to overcome. You remain in God’s love when you follow through on the nudging of the Holy Spirit, no matter how much you don’t understand why He directs you a certain way.

God’s love is God. God is love. If you are not overwhelmed by God’s love for you, perhaps that is where you need to start. Ask God to show you His love. Then remain in it.