It is perfect that you should bring this up here, because Step Three in forming a true and
lasting friendship with God is:
Love God.
(8)Eight
So, to review, the first three steps to God are: Know God, Trust God, Love God.
Right.
Everybody loves God! That last one should be easy!
If it’s so easy, why are so many of you having such a hard time doing it?
Because we don’t know what it “looks like” to love You.
And that’s because you don’t know what it looks like to love each other.
The third step may not be easy on a planet where loving someone without need is unheard
of, where loving another unconditionally is rarely practiced, and where loving everyone
without limitation is actually thought of as “wrong.”
Human beings have created a lifestyle in which feeling Oneness with everyone all of the time
does get them “in trouble.” And you’ve just named the chief causes of all this trouble. You
might call these the three great Iove-enders.
- Neediness
- Expectation
- Jealousy
You cannot truly love another when any of these three is present. And you certainly can’t love
a God who indulges in any one of these, much less all of them. Yet that is exactly the kind of
God you believe in, and, since you’ve declared it to be good enough for your God, you’ve al-
lowed it to be good enough for yourselves as well. So that is the environment within which
you seek to create and sustain your love for each other.
You have been taught of a God who is jealous, who has enormous expectations, and who is
so needy that if His love for you is unrequited, He’ll punish you with everlasting damnation.
These teachings are now a part of your cultural story. They are so imbedded in your psyche
that it will be a major undertaking to root them out. And yet, until you do, you cannot ever
hope to truly love each other, much less Me.
What can we do?
In order to solve a problem, you have to first understand it. Let’s take a look at this particular
problem one element at a time.