What can I do when I don't feel any love for God?

In chapter 2:9, you get a wonderful characteristic of those that are of God, “in Christ Jesus;” they “love Him.” In the cross the love has been expressed, and we have known and believed it, and love Him because He first loved us. Perhaps we are rather prone to think of our love to God, and may be often lamenting that we love Him so little; but it was His love to us expressed in the death of Christ that awoke love in our hearts to Him, and it is occupation with that great and blessed love of His that strengthens our poor, feeble love to Him, for feeble it is at beet. Perhaps you say, I enjoy His love to me but little, and I greatly grieve over it. But do you know that you may enjoy it a very great deal more if you go the right way about it. Do not imagine that you can work yourself up into any state of religious fervour which will make you more sensible of His love to you. No, let me say to you what I would say to my own heart as to this, “Get to the Lord about it.” Tell Him everything. All about your coldness and hardness of heart and want of interest in His things, and tell Him you want to know the love of God better, and do not say it all as a formal prayer, but let it be the cry of a heart yearning after Himself, and I know what He will do for you; He will take you by the hand and lead you into the warm sunshine of that love till its beams shall quicken that poor dead heart of yours into life and joy unspeakable. The apostle says, “The Lord direct your hearts into the love of God.” Who else could do it? You cannot command your heart’s affection. You cannot love anyone by force of will. You have not control of your love. It is only as you enjoy the love of God that you will love Him, and no one can lead you into the enjoyment of that love but the Lord, and He has the utmost delight in doing this for His own enjoyment. You say, I have been wishing my heart were not so hard, and I have been troubled about it. My only answer is, get into the Lord’s presence. Go direct to Himself. You will find Him gracious. Get into His company, leave man, leave earthly associations, get away from the presence even of the people of God for a little; go to your own room, anywhere, so you are alone, and have all out in His presence, and He will surprise you with what He will do for you.

"Thy name is an ointment poured forth, therefore do the virgins love Thee." "We love Him because He first loved us" (1 John 4:19). It is His love that draws out our hearts to Him, and the more we are occupied with Him and His love to us, the more we will love Him. There is no use to mourn over your lack of affection for Christ or to try and fan up a bigger flame of love for Him. Turn away from yourself to Christ and keep Him before your heart. Self-occupation will never deepen our affection for Christ, but occupation with Him will. We should feel how sluggish our affections are for Him, Christ, but it is not by mourning over our coldness, but by meditation upon His love for us that our hearts are warmed up. This is important to see. So turn away from your cold heart to the warm glow of His affection for you and you will find your heart warmed by it.

Indeed, there is nothing that will arouse the heart's affections for the Lord like a vivid reminder of what the Lord has suffered for us. If you feel your heart is growing cold, don't waste your time mourning over your cold state or in trying to pump up a stream of affection for Him out of your empty heart. It can't be done that way. But just stop and think of what He has suffered for you on the cross; think of what it meant for Him, the blessed and eternal Son of God, to leave the glory and bliss of His Father's house above and come into this sin-cursed earth to bleed, to suffer and to die that He might redeem your soul from hell, and purchase for you a title to a place in the Father's mansions above. Nothing will arouse the heart's affections like that.

Firstly. In the church in Ephesus the overcomer, judging the root of all failure, gets back to first love. May we not say that the only way to regain first love is to get a fresh sense of the love of Christ? "We love Him because He first loved us". We have not to be occupied with ourselves by looking within at our hearts in the effort to awaken love for Christ, but to look away to Christ to discern afresh in His heart His unchanging love for us, that enables faith to say "He loved me and gave Himself for me". To get back to first love, we may well pray the prayer of Ephesians 3 that the Father would grant us according to the riches of His glory to he strengthened with might by His Spirit in the inner man: that Christ may dwell In our hearts by faith, to know the love of Christ that passes knowing.

If you are a backslider, and have become cold of heart; if divine things have lost their lustre and reality to you; if a distance has come in between your Lord and you. What do you need? You need to come afresh into the realisation of what Jesus suffered for you. You need to stretch forth your hand afresh and come into contact with His wounded hands and side. Say, The Son of God loved me, and gave Himself for me. It will bring you where it brought Thomas, prostrate on his face at the Master's feet. It will make you cry as he cried, "My Lord and my God."

Do not be disheartened because you come to the conclusion that you do not love God. This is not the true question, but does not God point to Christ and His death for sins as the best proof even He could give of His love to you and me? When you bow your reasoning mind to such an overwhelming proof to satisfy you of His love, you will surely love, though you may be slow to allow it: others will see the change in you. When you rest on Christ's sacrifice for your sins, your heart will open to the God that thus cleanses you by Christ's blood from every stain; and you will be ready then to say, I have found Him, and soon learn that it was He who found you. Come just as you are, that He may have all the glory. And if He loved me with so mighty a love of His own without one single thing or thought in me worthy of His love; if He so loved me notwithstanding my entire being and all my life full of sins, will He cease to love me when I am His child, His son by faith in Christ, and by the Holy Spirit cry, Abba, Father? Assuredly not: even my father would not cast me off even if erring, thoughtless, and foolish. But God does then as Father judge my conduct as His child by day, and discipline me when I need it. And is not this the fruit of His persevering and faithful love to me in the wilderness?

We will now, with the Lord's help, seek to ponder these requests. Notice well that LOVE is the foundation of all. Without love we are but sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal. When the Church at Ephesus had left her first love, she was a fallen Church. Discernment, the ability to test things which differ, would be worthless without love. And the Apostle prays that their love might abound yet more and more. Living love must grow; and a love that does not grow and increase is probably a dead and worthless love: or, at least, a diseased and unhealthy love. And notice it is not spoken of as a certain definite love: as love to God, or love to Christ, or to the Apostle himself, or to other saints, or even love of the Word and prayer. It is love in general, and doubtless takes in all these. You may have noticed that the true reading of 1 John 4:19, is, "We love, because He first loved us." You may feel, as I did, disappointed at the old familiar words being changed: and these old, well-loved words are certainly true: we do love Him, because He first loved us: but the true reading includes the old words we all love so much, but it takes in much more. It is a general, absolute love: love to "Him" and love to one another: love of the Word, and love of prayer, are all included. So it is here in our verse in Philippians, I believe. And the only way for that love to increase yet more and more, is to know more and more of His love to us: it is to keep ourselves in the sunshine of His love: it is not by examining our love to see how much we have: it is not by trying to love more: but it is just to take Him at His word when He tells us how much He loves us, and bask in the sunshine of His love: "He loved the ones for whom He died. Not ours to question why! But ours to know the love of Him Who came to die."

“We love because He has first loved us” (JND). This is a spontaneous, essential reaction. No human effort is involved in this at all, no pressing of myself, no stirring up of my emotions by artificial means. Love must be a spontaneous thing, or it is not love at all. “I charge you, O ye daughters of Jerusalem, by the roes, and by the hinds of the field, that ye stir not up, nor awake [my] love, till he please” (Song of Solomon 2:7). The roe, or gazelle, is the very picture of timid sensitivity, while the hind, climbing with sure‑footedness to heights above the common level, tells the same story, of avoiding the pressures of danger. Love cannot be produced from our own hearts by a process of stirring them up: this will fail, for our hearts are no fountain of love at all: we must look elsewhere: “we love because He first loved us.” The reception of the love of God is the only source of love toward God or toward others. Let us but believe His love to be what it actually is, and this produces a glad and willing response, unfeignedly, unaffectedly. The law says, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbor as thyself” (Luke 10:27). But every effort of man to do so only issues in utter defeat: it is against his nature. What is the use of putting all our energy into pumping to draw water from a well that yields only poison gas? Let us forget such a well as our own corrupted hearts, and turn to the living, flowing fountain of the heart of God; and without effort, without human operation, our hearts will become filled with His love.

"E. H." Your case is by no means an uncommon one; but this, you will say, is poor comfort for you. We know no remedy but in looking off to Jesus. You will never be really happy so long as you continue to look at your own ever-changing feelings. You can only find rest in Jesus and His finished work. Do not be "trying" to believe. If you were to say to a friend, "I am trying to believe what you say," he would consider it a very poor compliment. Let your heart muse on the love of God, on the finished work of Christ, and on the testimony of the Holy Ghost in Scripture, and as you muse, the fire of devotion will kindle, and you will be able to sing and give thanks. May God chase away the clouds and mists, and pour in upon your precious soul the bright and blessed beams of His salvation!

If you talk of your deserts you are not fully matured in grace; you forget how He took you up, and that love is the same love that you still have to do with as you go on through the wilderness. What are you individually occupied with? Is it your leanness? Is it the providential dealings of God with you? Say even, is it disciplinarian dealings? Well, do they as they should — drive you out of your circumstances? And where? Do they drive you to despair, or to GOD? Look out of yourselves, that will give you lower ideas of self than looking at your low attainments. People say, "I find no love in my heart." If you only went a musing on what you were when Christ took you up, you'd find the love flowing in. Here Peter refers to it practically — "growing there by milk of the word" — "gospel."