Col 3:18-19 (NIV) Wives, submit to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord. Husbands, love your wives and do not be harsh with them. Suppose you married someone you can’t stand and don’t trust. That would break the purpose of two people getting married. A marriage is to be a relationship of sharing everything, loving one another, caring for one another, and trusting each other completely. A marriage without love and trust would lack all the typical reasons for getting married. Establishing a relationship with Jesus is very similar to establishing a marriage relationship; it is all about love.

Mark 12:30 (NIV) Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. Love isn’t required in a business relationship. In most cases you don’t feel any attachment, concerns, relationship, or love for a person taking your money at a store. You just want to get your supplies, take care of your needs, and then get on with your life. So, you conduct a business transaction with them. However, love IS required in a Jesus-relationship. You can’t just do what it takes to get what you want from Jesus and leave.

Rom 5:8 (NIV) But God demonstrates His own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Jesus is doing His part in reaching out to you for a relationship. He already loves you more than you are even capable of loving yourself or Him. He has a sacrificial love for you that caused Him to die for you. Now it time for you to not only trust, believe in, and ask Jesus for things, it is time to learn how to love Him. AND, as usual, God is not only requiring love of you, He is providing it.

You saw that Jesus requires you to have a faith relationship with Him. So, since He requires you to have faith, He supplies it for you: Heb 12:2a (NIV) Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the Author and Perfecter of our faith. Now you are seeing that He requires love from you; so, He supplies it: Rom 5:5b (NIV) God has poured out His love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, Whom He has given us. He isn’t requiring you to learn how to love; He is asking you to learn how to yield to His love that you ALREADY HAVE in your heart.

God demonstrated in the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus that He will go to ANY length to give you everything you need. But, He requires that you ask Jesus to help you with them; and, then He expects you to believe He is true to His word. Then from these special experiences you get from your relationship of asking and believing in Him, He will help you learn to yield to God’s love for Him.

What if you married someone and then found out you really didn’t trust them or like them very much? Suppose, because you didn’t want to go through the messy aspects of divorce, you decided to go ahead and stay married to them. Then after a few years of living together, talking together, going through difficult times together, you found yourself trusting them and loving them with all your heart. Building experiences together, going through difficult times together, sharing together, and helping one another, all help develop a love relationship.

It is going to take you some time to get to the place where you are able to start asking Jesus for the things of your life like He wants you to. It is going to take some time for you to learn how to trust, believe, have faith, rely, and depend on Jesus like He wants you to. But, during that time of learning how to do these things, you will find yourself learning to not only ask Him for His help, you will not only learn how to believe and trust Him, you will learn to love Him with all your heart.