Loving God Is Much More Than A Belief

​I have imagined this scene before. Running through the gates of heaven, into the arms of God, proclaiming how much I love him.

But just as I settle into God's arms - home - God pulls away. Gently. But his face wears a hint of "but do you?"

Then God looks around. The place is filled with people. So I look too.

And there they are.

People I did not love well. The poor I ignored. The coworker I dismissed because they slowed me down. The friend I stopped calling when the relationship became inconvenient. The stranger whose story I reduced to a stereotype so I wouldn’t have to feel anything. The ones I labeled before I ever loved. The ones I debated instead of listened to. The ones I quietly decided were “not my people.

And maybe the hardest to look at: The ones who needed something from me when I had just enough to give, but chose not to.

I used to think loving God was something I did in private. A quiet prayer. A song. A belief I carried in my heart. But here, in this imagined moment, it becomes painfully clear: Love was never meant to stay contained.

It was always meant to move. To cross the street. To interrupt my schedule. To soften my tone. To challenge my assumptions. To make room where I would rather create distance.

I start to see something else too. Not just where I failed to love, but how often I convinced myself that I was loving.

I shared the post. I had the opinion. I defended the “right” side. I aligned myself with people who believed what I believed. But love doesn’t always look like agreement. And conviction is not the same thing as compassion.

There were moments when I was more committed to being right than being kind. More interested in winning an argument than understanding a person. More focused on protecting my comfort than entering someone else’s pain. And if I’m honest, some of the loudest declarations of love for God I’ve seen in the world around me, have come from people who seem the quickest to dismiss, divide, or dehumanize others.

We’ve learned how to say the right words about God, but we’ve struggled to embody the heart of God.

We draw lines. We build camps. We decide who’s in and who’s out. We speak with certainty about people we’ve never taken the time to know. And all the while, we call it faith.

But standing here, in this moment, I can’t escape the truth: Love for God is not proven by what I say to Him. It’s revealed in how I show up for them. Not perfectly. Not always with grand gestures. But in the small, daily decisions to see, to stay, to care.

God doesn’t ask me to prove my love with volume, he asks me to prove it with presence. With the person in front of me. With the one who disagrees with me. With the one who frustrates me. With the one I would rather avoid.

Because maybe the real question isn’t, “Do I love God?” Maybe it’s, “Do the people around me experience something that looks like God’s love because of me?”

And maybe heaven isn’t where we first face that question. Maybe it’s something we’re being invited to answer right here.

Right now.