God is love. He didn’t need us. But He want­ed us.

And that is the most amaz­ing thing.—Pas­tor Rick War­ren

Do you re­mem­ber your first love? The ex­cite­ment you ex­pe­ri­enced be­ing around that per­son? The thrill of know­ing your af­fec­tion for them was rec­i­p­ro­cat­ed. Your ea­ger­ness to cat­a­logue their fea­tures: the sound of their voice; the play of ex­pres­sions on their face; the spe­cial smile they had for on­ly you, the way you felt when they em­braced or com­pli­ment­ed you. The sweet­ness of just be­ing in their pres­ence. Your joy when they shared them­selves and who they re­al­ly were with you, de­light­ing in your pres­ence too.

How you savoured those heady days of a re­la­tion­ship with your first love! But did you know that God de­sires for us to have that ex­act ex­pe­ri­ence with Him? The Cre­ator of the uni­verse and all that is wants to have a pas­sion­ate love af­fair with us!

He wants us to de­light in His Pres­ence; to share our­selves with Him; to hear Him speak in­ti­mate­ly with us; to feel when He em­braces us. He wants us to be ex­cit­ed to be close to Him, learn­ing more about Him and who He is, every day. He wants us to take the time to build and nur­ture a re­la­tion­ship with Him. Just as we chase af­ter our hu­man loves—and they af­ter us—God wants us to chase af­ter Him, even as He lov­ing­ly pur­sues us.

I love those who love Me, and those who seek Me dili­gent­ly, find Me.

—Proverbs 8:17

Re­la­tion­ships don’t hap­pen just like that. They must be formed, nur­tured, and worked at. It is the same with God. We all have heard the Bible quote, “Seek ye first the King­dom of God…” This is where your love jour­ney with God be­gins. You have to seek Him out; to want Him and to be­lieve Him and be­lieve in Him, too. You must hunger for Him and want every­thing He has and is—every part of Him.

He says to all of us: “Come to Me, just as you are. I will emp­ty you of all your hate, anger, re­sent­ment and jeal­ousy…All those poi­so­nous things that were em­bed­ded with­in you from the fall. My Love for you will fill you up with its sweet­ness, and re­make and re­build you. My Love helps you be­come who you tru­ly were cre­at­ed to be…”

And His promise is that He will con­tin­ue to do this work in, for and with us, all the days of our lives. That work hap­pens as we take ba­by steps, dai­ly, in build­ing our re­la­tion­ship with God.

A per­son may see you and de­sire to be with you and want a re­la­tion­ship with you, but noth­ing hap­pens un­til you de­sire them as well and rec­i­p­ro­cate that wish for a re­la­tion­ship. It doesn’t work well if one per­son forces their at­ten­tion on the oth­er. So it is with God.

You may be go­ing along and liv­ing your life un­til one day you re­alise that what you re­al­ly want—what you re­al­ly need—is God. When you come to that point of aware­ness, that is when He will pour all that He has in­to you. You come in­to His won­der­ful and per­fect pres­ence to live in peace and joy and re­ceive all the bless­ings He meant for you to have, es­pe­cial­ly peace of mind, sta­bil­i­ty, com­fort, self-love.

We love be­cause He first loved us.—1 John 4:19

If you want to tru­ly live, you must con­nect and form a re­la­tion­ship with the One who cre­at­ed you.

He is woo­ing each of us to bond with Him; to know Him and His ways, and His life-giv­ing prin­ci­ples. Will you re­spond to His lover’s call?

I chal­lenge you to­day…Bond with God. Em­bark on the great­est love af­fair of your life.

It may be your best de­ci­sion, ever…

DE­BRA FORDE McALPIN is the di­rec­tor of The ILY­PLY Foun­da­tion, which was in­cor­po­rat­ed in April 2016, and cre­at­ed to em­pow­er and en­hance the lives of women, fill­ing them with knowl­edge and wis­dom from God to sus­tain them through life’s every­day chal­lenges; there­by help­ing them to live a more peace­ful and joy-filled life. ILY­PLY stands for I LOVE YOU, PLEASE LOVE YOU, and is God’s ap­peal to us to love our­selves be­cause He (the Cre­ator of the uni­verse) loved us first and loves us best.