Learning to Let God Love You
There’s a moment in the Jesus Christ Superstar play when Mary Magdalene sings, “I don’t know how to love him.” She cares deeply for Jesus, yet she’s overwhelmed by what that love means.
The other morning, her words took a different turn within me. Instead of asking, Do I know how to love God? I wondered, Do I know how to let God love me?
So during my Quiet Time, I tried.
It sounds simple enough.
But honest to God, I couldn’t do it.
Almost immediately, my mind jumped to emails, meetings, writing, and everything else I needed to accomplish. Then I crossed my arms over my chest. My body tightened, and I felt resistance rising within me.
“God,” I prayed, “I don’t know how to let you love me. Maybe I’m not even sure I’ll let you love me.”
Why Receiving Love Is So Hard
Maybe you have trouble letting God love you too.
It can feel easier to do something for God than to sit still and receive God’s love. Doing gives us purpose and a sense of control.
Receiving asks us to open our hearts, lower our defenses, and trust that God loves us exactly as we are.
Most of us have spent years learning how to express our love for God. We pray, serve, read Scripture, listen for the Holy Spirit, and try to become more patient, compassionate, and faithful.
These are good and necessary ways of responding to God.
But somewhere along the way, we may have learned more about what we should do for God than how to receive what God longs to give us.
When we feel we’re falling short, the old voice whispers: Pray harder. Try harder. Be more disciplined. Get your spiritual life together.
Without realizing it, our relationship with God can become another project to manage.
But love can’t be built only on what one person does for the other. Love must also be received.
Before we can love God freely, we have to let God love us.
God Takes the Initiative
The deeper I move into the contemplative tradition, the more I discover that God isn’t waiting for me to get my spiritual life in order. God is already here, loving me. Always. Everywhere.
I still carry old patterns of earning approval into my spiritual life: If I pray enough, serve enough, or become spiritual enough, perhaps I’ll be worthy of more of God’s love.
Yet the more I sit quietly in God’s presence, the more I discover that our relationship with God isn’t something we have to micromanage. God isn’t an idea to be mastered. God is a living Presence to be encountered and a love to be received.
The spiritual life doesn’t begin with our effort to reach God. It begins with God already reaching toward us.
Christ’s love isn’t a reward we receive after becoming better people. It’s the grace that slowly transforms us into the people God created us to be.
Jesus doesn’t say, “Achieve my love” or “Earn my love.”
He says, “Abide in my love” (John 15:9). Stay here. Remain here. Let my love become your home.
Throughout the Gospels, Jesus touches those who feel untouchable, eats with those who believe they’re unworthy, and looks with compassion on people before they’ve changed. God’s love takes the initiative.
Maybe our part isn’t to achieve God’s love, but to consent to it—to loosen our grip, stop proving our worth, and receive what has already been freely given.
Receiving love makes us vulnerable. It asks us to come out from behind our busyness, accomplishments, religious efforts, and need for approval. Those things may be meaningful and good, but they can’t satisfy the deepest longing of the human heart.
Eventually, they leave us wanting something more—not because we’ve failed, but because God has placed within us a longing that only divine love can satisfy. Only God’s grace can transform us.
Even our restlessness can open our hearts to grace. Even our searching can prepare us to receive the perfect love only God can give.
We Are Wanted by God
I’ve been reading Watchman Nee’s Song of Songs: Unveiling the Mystery of Passionate Intimacy with Christ, a devotional reflection on the Song of Solomon. Nee sees this ancient love poem as a picture of the soul’s deepening relationship with Christ—a movement from knowing about God to experiencing God’s transforming love.
As I read, one line rang out to me:
“I am my beloved’s, and my beloved is mine” (Song of Songs 6:3).
I’d read those words before, but that morning they spoke to me differently. It was as if God said:
You are wanted.
Not just loved.
Wanted.
That went deeper.
I’ve spent much of my life trying to grasp the truth that God loves me. But I’d rarely stopped to consider that God wants me—that God continually draws me into a personal embrace.
“I don’t know how to let you love me,” I prayed. “I don’t know why you would want me.”
Then tears began to stream down my face. They weren’t tears of shame, fear, or sadness. It felt as though God’s love had gently pierced my heart and was saying: “It’s true. I want you. I love you. Let me love you.”
The contemplative tradition sometimes calls this the gift of tears. They can come when God’s love reaches beneath our defenses and touches a place words can’t reach.
The tears felt holy—not grace as an idea in my head, but grace unfolding within me. Almost as if I were being baptized again, washed in the truth that I’m wanted by God.
Maybe you’ve experienced tears like that and quickly brushed them away. But sometimes the tears are the prayer. Sometimes they’re the heart’s way of receiving what the mind can’t fully understand.
That morning, I let the tears come. They streamed down my face as I opened myself to the love I had resisted for so long.
When the Mind Resists
A few moments later, I went right back into my head.
Was that real? Did I truly experience God? Was I making it up?
Almost as quickly as I’d received the moment, my mind began questioning and analyzing it.
This resistance isn’t unusual. We want proof. We want to understand what’s happening and decide whether it makes sense. We can study theology, read Scripture, and learn the language of faith—and all of that matters.
But God’s love is larger than what the mind can hold. Love can’t be fully explained or figured out. At some point, it must be received.
We resist because receiving love makes us vulnerable. We resist because surrender means loosening control. We resist because much of life has taught us that love and acceptance must be earned.
But we can’t think our way into this kind of love. We can’t work harder and finally arrive there. We can’t manufacture a spiritual experience.
Maybe we don’t need to understand everything. Maybe we simply need to stop resisting. To surrender. To consent. To let grace enter the places within us that are still afraid to be loved.
Little by little, divine love softens what fear, striving, and self-protection have hardened. Our grip loosens. Our fears lose some of their power. Without forcing it, we begin to reflect the One who has been loving us all along.
This is the invitation I sense now—not to stop praying, serving, writing, teaching, or using the gifts God has given me, but to let those things flow from a deeper place.
First, let God love me. Then let that love shape how I live and love.
A Simple Practice
Learning to receive God’s love takes intention, patience, and grace. You don’t have to create a powerful spiritual experience or force yourself to feel anything. Simply bring your longing to God.
1. Pause. Sit comfortably and let your body become still.
2. Place your hand on your chest above your heart. Notice your breathing and heartbeat. Become present to God and to what’s stirring within you.
3. Name your longing. Pray, “God, I want to experience your love more deeply. Help me let you love me.”
4. Notice. Without judging yourself, become aware of any doubt, tension, fear, resistance, or need to earn God’s love.
5. Receive. Imagine Christ embracing you with love—not disappointed, not evaluating, and not waiting for you to improve.
6. Savor the words. Silently repeat: I am wanted by God. Don’t analyze them or try to make something happen. Let the words move gently from your head toward your heart.
7. Consent. Pray, “Jesus, give me the grace to let you love me exactly as I am.”
8. Remain. Sit quietly for a minute or two. Let the words have their way with you.
Return to this practice during your Quiet Time or throughout the day. Beneath the doubts and questions, you may hear God gently whisper: “I want you. I love you. Let me love you.”
Hold these words while driving, walking, waiting in line, or pausing between tasks:
God wants me. I am wanted by God.
Bit by bit, the joy of being wanted by God may begin to settle more deeply within you.
Prayer of the Heart
Jesus,
Thank you for loving me just as I am, exactly where I am.
Before I took my first breath, before I accomplished anything, and before I even knew your name, you wanted me.
Sometimes I don’t know how to let you love me.
Part of me still wants to do something, figure something out, stay in control, or earn what you’ve already given.
But deeper than all of that is a longing to rest in your love.
With your grace and mercy, gently soften whatever still resists your love.
When my mind starts striving again, quietly remind me:
You want me.
Amen.
— brian plachta
brianplachta.com
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