Loving Jesus Above Anyone and Anything

Loving someone often happens naturally.

But maintaining loving another person is not that easy. In fact, it takes work.

Love.

A small and seemingly simple word. Yet it holds more power than we realize.

And I’m not an expert on the subject of love. Instead, I held misconceptions about love as a child and young woman.

You see, my father abandoned me for a time, and I never remember the phrase “I love you!” by either of my parents until later in life.

I was grown with my own children the first time my father uttered the words I love you. The conversation’s forever etched in my memory.

Still, as much as I wanted to hear my dad tell me he loved me, I needed to believe it. And I longed for the reassurance he meant it.

You know what? The same holds true today. My husband can never tell me or show me he loves me too many times.

Because a continual and intentional assurance of love takes any relationship to a higher and deeper level. Pure and whole-hearted love, in the most powerful form, is a show-and-tell affection.

Loving Jesus 

Likewise, the words I love You, Jesus! rise in my heart and roll off my tongue more often these days. Why?

Maybe I’m tired of surface substitutes for real love. Perhaps I’ve grown weary of this: what Jesus made true about love, people made fake. And I believe Christ is teaching me about an authentic and lasting love.

2012 marked a spiritual milestone in my life, written in my journal. I decided to fall head over heels in love with Jesus, loving Him more than anyone or anything.

Can we fall in love with Christ and stay in love with Him—pure and whole-hearted affection? Not only is this kind of love relationship possible, but it’s what the Lord intended all along.

Love Jesus With All

How to experience this love relationship is found in the answers to two questions.

(1.) What’s the greatest commandment?

This question posed to Christ: “And he said to him, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself’” (Matthew 22:37-39, ESV, emphasis mine).

Dictionary.com defines heart as “The center of total personality, especially with reference to intuition, feeling, or emotion.”

Merriam-webster explains soul as “A person’s moral or emotional nature or sense of identity. The spiritual part of a human being.”

Google tells us the mind is “The element of a person that enables them to be aware of the world and their experiences, to think, and to feel; the faculty of consciousness and thought. A person’s mental processes, intellect.”

Therefore, every part of me—my whole being—loves Jesus. I love Him with my heart and emotions, through my spiritual identity, and in my mind and experiences. That’s the greatest commandment and the greatest love.

Love Jesus Because He Loves

(2.) Where did love originate?

1 John 4:19 says, “We love because he first loved us” (ESV).

God created love and demonstrated love on Calvary’s cross through His Son—a show-and-tell affection.

Jesus loved us so much, He died for us. Yet our motivation for loving Jesus is not out of a sense of guilt as though we owe it to Him. Or even loving Christ for what He can do for us.

Since Jesus loves us, we reciprocate. Because His love is unconditional, it draws our hearts in and strengthens our affections toward Him. This higher and deeper love surpasses love from people—even those who love us well.

Loving Jesus More

Loving Jesus more than anyone or anything means giving all of myself to Him alone, not to the idols or shiny gods of this world.

And loving Jesus above all else isn’t radical Christianity or even Jesus freaks. It’s the heart of true disciples.

So I ask myself reflective questions: Is there a person in my life I love more than Jesus? Or, do I put another person or thing above my devotion and affections to Jesus?

Early one morning before I stepped out of bed, I told Jesus I loved Him more than anyone or anything. I plan to say this declaration every morning before starting my day and devotions.

Will you declare your loving devotion to Jesus daily?

Are there any thoughts you would add on loving Christ more?

For more on love, Good News and God News About Love.

Featured photo by Alex Block on Unsplash/top photo by DESIGNECOLOGIST on Unsplash/middle photo by Christian Wiediger on Unsplashbottom photo by Fa Barboza on Unsplash.