The book of John tells us that God loved the world so much that He gave His only Son.  What is the significance of being told again and again that God loves us?  The general view or perspective of life is that we are not loved enough.  Most people want to be loved more.  The message from reality show participants to world famous athletes is that people just want to be loved.  We believe that we are lovable and that others should love us and when they don't love us it is because they don't properly understand us.  When people examine the lack of love in their lives the tears often flow primarily because they believe they should be loved and that others are failing when they don't love them.  We also think that the failures in our lives can be attributed to the failure of others to love us.   

So here is the complex dilema we often find ourselves in.  We need to experience the genuine unfeigned love from someone outside of us.  We have some sense that people should love us, that we are lovable, or at least others should try harder to know us so they would have a good chance to love us.  We certainly feel that they are being selfish when they don't love us or at least they are acting toward us with an inappropriate lack of interest.  Think about this with me if you will.  In the deep part of your soul what do you think is the reason when others fail to love you?  You do not really believe that we are just in an unfortuate situation where we need to be loved but others just don't have the capacity to love.  That would be a kind of cosmic delima where something that people need really doesn't exist.  We actually believe that people should and could love us if that would simply conduct their lives with the appropriate amount of effort to know us.  Most of us think that if people really knew us they would be able to love us if they wanted to. 

If this is how we really feel then we have identified some very legitimate questions to ask ourselves.  Is my failure to properly love others caused by the same reason that others are failing to love me?  Do we all legitimately have a greater capacity to love than we are exercising?  Is it true that if we got to know people at a deeper level we would find them lovable?   

Lets think about some answers to some of these questions.  Jesus taught that the lovableness of people is not the motivation for loving them.  The truth is that most of us don't act legitimately toward others in such a way that we could generate love in them if they would just let us.  It is primarily a method of self justification when we contend that we are very lovable if people would only do what is right and love us.  Your hope for receiving the love that you were created to have cannot be based on your ability to make people love you.  Jesus taught that people should love their friends and family, they should love strangers, and they should even love their enemies.  The people who effectively love you are not going to do it because you are deep down just so lovable.   

This same reality applies to the critical need that you have to love others.  One of the greatest mistakes that people often make is to confuse their need to be loved with their even deeper need to love.  Jesus actually taught that the number one thing you could do to actively deal with the sense of not being loved enough was to utilize every faculty of your being to be one who effectively loves.  The way that others conduct their lives especially the degree to which they are a loving person is outside the realm of our control.  Jesus said that the things we can't control would never be the cause of our failure or lack of joy.  You were not built to legitimately need something that was unavailable.  The truth is that the broken and inconsistent love that other people might provide us would never be sufficient to satisfy our need to be loved.  The love of friends and family is a great treasure and to have it is to be greatly blessed but it will never be enough to fill our souls.   

Only the love of God received and accepted and more and more effectively processed will truly give us what we are meant for.  The question as to whether God loves us enough to willfully experience the death of His Son is not a question of icing on the cake but it is the critical question of our existence.  God is a lover like no other.  His love is continual and based on full knowledge and no misunderstandings.  God does not love the person we want to be, or the person we are trying to convince ourselves and others that we are.  God loves the real me and all His efforts only make sense in the context of the real me, just as I am.  He loves with full wisdom and loves in view of all lives and circumstances.  Everything He has done from the first moment of creation has been based on His plan and purpose to allow us to share in His life as one of His beloved.  God doesn't love by being incorporated into our life as much as by incorporating us into His life.  Being loved by God is always about being transformed, reborn, shaped according to His will and desire.  Any effort to make it something less than this ends in frustration. 

The only real motivation for loving you rests in the heart of God.  He loves you because of who He is and not because of who you are.  This truth reduces the impact of your current worth or lovableness.  The people who love you most effectively will be motivated by the love that lives in them.  If you want to be more loved by people then associate with people who love strangers and who are even trying to love their enemies.  Those people should have no trouble loving you.  The people who know the love of God will have love to give.   

A few vital points.  Spend every day of your life allowing God to express His love to you in the avenues and methods He chooses.  As long as we try in any way to dictate to God how to love us we will be frustrated.  Let the failure of other people to love you expose the failures to love in your own life. Use your energy to love instead of focusing on the failures of others.  Only God can effectively love us and only God can give us the abililty to truly love others.