Although I’m slightly embarrassed to admit it, I’m a bit of a romantic and I’ve always dreamed about being caught up in a love story. When I was younger, that dream was always of falling in love with another woman, sharing joys and sorrows with her, experiencing the depths of mutual understanding, and being loved unconditionally forever. Our culture often sells us the vision that if only we can find the ‘love of our life’, we’ll be truly happy and complete. To some extent, I agree with that, but not in the way you might expect. Let me explain.
Human beings are relational and our hearts are designed to love. We’re all created for intimacy and we’re all meant to be known and desired, but we often attach our affections to the wrong things or people. Our hearts often go astray:
‘The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?’
Jeremiah 17:9
I know that I have often looked to a woman to fulfil in me my deep need to be completely known, fully understood and unconditionally loved but I also know that’s a crushing and unrealistic burden to put on another person. No fallible human being will ever be able to love me like that. With the best intentions in the world, we will all let each other down and disappoint each other.
When I came to know Jesus, I realised that he was the one that I’d been looking for – the one whose love for me is so strong that he even suffered an agonising death and rose from the grave so that I could enjoy intimacy with him forever. I was able to exclaim with the Psalmist,
‘Because your love is better than life,
my lips will glorify you.’
Psalm 63:3
When my heart has been drawn away from Jesus and I’ve put another lover in his place, the only way I’ve been able to overcome that has been to return to my true love – my Lord, Saviour, and best friend. The only way I’ve found to get over a lover is to devote myself to another lover – the greatest lover we could ever know. I want to be so captivated and enthralled by Jesus’s beauty and love that nothing else comes close and all desires that would lead me away from him are transformed into desires for him.
Whenever I’m tempted to stray or let my love for Jesus grow cold, I try to remember to guard my heart (Proverbs 4:23) and immerse myself in the truth of his word. Reframing how I think of the Bible has really helped. I think about the person on Earth that I’m most attracted to or most desire and imagine they’d written me a beautiful letter telling me about how much they love me using all sorts of metaphors and analogies and stories all designed to show their passionate heart of love for me. How much would I want to read that letter? In the Bible, we have the most exquisite love letter from the one who desires to shower his love on us forever. If you’ve never explored this for yourself, why not start reading it today?
None of us can live without a lover. We all need to meet the lover of our souls who will never let us down and will love us forever. If you don’t already know Jesus, can I invite you to turn your heart to him today? It will be the best thing you’ve ever done.
If you want to know more about Jesus and how to follow him, Christianity Explored is a good place to start.
