At this time of year where the pressure to love and be loved is all around us, we have one of three choices. Embrace, ignore, or boycott. Valentines Day is a polarizing holiday. People either love the idea of celebrating love or hate the idea of expressing love being forced on them.

“Why not celebrate love, it’s the greatest gift” verses “Why do I need a day to celebrate love? I celebrate it every day.”
Maybe it’s the empty feeling that can come after Valentines Day. The flowers fade, chocolates are eaten, harmony is shattered by the next straw that breaks the camel’s relationship back.

Maybe it’s the ache that comes from feeling less love than our thirsty hearts seem to require.

One day of love cannot make up for years of heartache.

One day of loneliness can remind us of all the other lonely days that come before and after.

All of us were created to love and be loved. It isn’t a desire that is satisfied in one day.

God created us for intimacy. Intimacy with him and intimacy with each other.
He created us to remain in love. His love.

“I have loved you even as the Father has loved me. Remain in my love.” John 15:9 NLT

What does it look like to remain in God’s love?
To have the kind of intimacy with him that weathers all storms, all our tantrums, the times when we’re silent before him in awe or resentment.

This is what he offers to us.

John 15 shows us that this kind of love is fruitful, refining, and intimate.

When we remain in his love we see him as the source that sustains us. He is the vine to our branches. All of the fruit in our relationships, ministry, family, comes from him as our source. When we rely on him we develop those fruits of the Spirit that allow us to shower peace, patience, joy, self-control, so many good things into our relationships and lives.

Because remaining in God’s love doesn’t allow us to remain as we are.

As we seek his truth, thorny parts of us are lovingly brought to light and pruned, releasing the new growth in us to bask in his light.

By internalizing his words in the Bible, letting his truth sink down deep into us, we begin to see the lies that we believe about ourselves that separate us from him. Lies that say we’re not good enough, wise enough, whole enough to have the love of the holy God.

When light shines in these dark places, we realize that we can seek his face and bask in his presence. We can talk to him, ask him to work in us and through us to bring the work of his heart to the world.

And as this heart change comes, as we desire more and more to do his will and obey his commands we begin to experience joy that is not dependant on our circumstances. Joy that is exuberant and outpouring. An overflowing joy.
This kind of joy flows out to others. As we experience and remain in Jesus’s love we begin to be able to love others as he commanded. To love others with the same grace and intimacy that he loved us, as his father loved him. A holy, joyful, intimate, grace-filled love.
It’s the kind of love that surpasses both skepticism and hype. A deep soul, deep-seated love.