God Is Love

Dear God,

For months, God, by my own decision and laziness, I chose to drift further and further apart from You. It became worse when I was picked to serve You in church because I went through a lot of pretending that I was close with You when I wasn't. What made it even worse was that when I confronted the pastors about my relationship with You, they often said, "You can do it, you have the heart for God" or other things related to my potential or You, when I knew it wasn't true because I actually wasn't close to You at all. 

So today a close guy friend of mine told me they loved me and deep down I felt so hurt because I knew he was such a great guy but I just can't feel the same way about him no matter how hard I try. I started to feel so ashamed with myself. Why can't I ever fall in love with someone who is so good to me? Is there something wrong with me?

This month, God, I believe You have spoken to me about something very very important. Although I am so far away from You right now, You still persisted and Your words got through to me, and now I have opened my ears. At first the words came to me simply as "If God is love, we cannot love others until we know God." but unknowingly through a sermon, and today as I desperately searched for the bible chapter that reminded me of the above words, You gave me 1 John 4: 7-21.

Right now these verses of the bible are so perfectly worded that I can't explain it in my own words and its so hard to explain what they mean, yet I can feel Your words speaking to me in my circumstance.

I realise the reason why I cannot love others is because I don't even know You yet. I don't have a good analogy but I'd liken it to promising to give someone a present like a watch, but actually you don't even have the watch to begin with. How can I give 'love' to others when You are love and I chose not to have You in my life? This is something that has motivated me to read the bible and learn more about You, so I can learn how to love like You did.

God please give me the motivation and understanding to study these bible passages, as these passages have stirred up my desire to want to get to know You again. 

I also pray that as I begin on this journey with You again, that my ego and pride and desire to please others, that those thoughts will stop distracting me from my true mission to learn more about You.

Thankyou God.