Love is not something you can discover from the isolated seclusion of your study room with your nose buried in a book or behind a screen as a "keyboard warrior". Love requires a response, an action, for it to be valid
"If you love me, keep my commandments." -John 14:15
Many translations of the Bible render that verse as
"If you love me, you WILL keep my commandments"-John 14:15 (emphasis mine)
The statement, "You will keep my commandments", does not entail that becoming a disciple of Christ will subject us to a power-hungry God who wishes to devoid us of free will as an act of worship, rather, if we truly love God, keeping His commandments will be a no brainer as the desire to watch and heed Him grows within our hearts. God grants according to our desires (Alma 29:4), but if we delight in the Lord, he will GIVE us the desires of our hearts. (Psalm 37:4) The will to obey God will flow freely through a loving relationship with Him.
And so the fruit of Love is action. You WIll do something for the person you love. Love needs to be expressed in order to be authentic. Saying "you love someone" doesn't hold any weight if we aren't holding space for that person in our life through our undivided attention and conscious awareness of them. Talk is cheap, you don't confess your love, you show it.
Simply stating our belief in God is not love. Love requires action to be valid. Action is what distinguishes mere belief from faith. Without faith, it is impossible to please God, and faith, without works, is dead. (Hew 11:6, James 2 ) Likewise, love without its appropriate response is a hollow shell. We can't fake Love, nor can we fabricate authentic discipleship to Christ. We embody His Love, we become Love, and that Love flows through us.
True love is unconditional, but it always manifests through actions. We may think God doesn't love us because we can't see His actions on our behalf, but just as a teenager may be resentful and despiteful towards their own parent's inability to raise them properly, that same child as an adult may be brought to tears as they grow to recognize on a deep and personal level through parenting their own children the struggles and sacrifices made by their own mom and dad for them. The deeper we enter into the Way of following Christ, the more and more we will come to comprehend the sacrifices made by God for us. We will see and recognize more and more His unwavering devotion to uphold and sustain us on a daily basis. The more we draw near unto God, the more we will see Him in everything, the more in awe we will be of his presence. We will be humbled again and again of his intimate awareness of each of us. The more we will want to love in return because we will know that He first loved us. (1st John 4)
So love requires a response, an action, for it to be real. It can't be discovered though secluding oneself in isolation. It requires we step into the light to engage with heaven and earth. We need to wrestle, to lay hold, to God and the goodness, truth, and beauty He desires to bestow unto us. The Divine calls us to awake and arise so that we can penetrate life with our presence and attention. From God's love we give, create, and hold space for others to do the same.
If you love someone, it will move you. If you love God, you WILL keep His commandments.
