How do I know my love is growing?

Feelings come and go. Some of the most faithful people who ever lived went through long stretches where they felt nothing at all toward God. So if you measure your love by how warm you feel on a Sunday, you’ll be confused most of the time.

There are better signs. Here are six. You don’t need all of them. Look for whether any of them is starting.

1. I want to know God more, not only get things from Him

You catch yourself reading a passage and wondering what it says about Him, not only what it says to do.

2. I want to please Him, not only avoid punishment

You do the right thing and notice that the reason has changed. It’s less I’d better and more I’d like to make Him glad.

3. I’m learning to trust Him when I don’t understand

Something didn’t go your way, and you went toward God instead of away.

4. Obedience is becoming a response of love

Doing what He says feels less like rules and more like answering someone you know.

5. I’m beginning to love others as an expression of my love for God

Scripture — 1 John 4:20–21 (OTB)

If someone says, “I love God,” and yet hates his brother or sister, he is a liar; for the one who does not love his brother or sister whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen. And this is the commandment we have from Him: that the one who loves God must also love his brother and sister.

John is blunt: love for the God you can’t see shows up in how you treat the people you can. If you find yourself more patient with your family, slower to write someone off, more willing to help, that may be your love for God growing.

6. God Himself is becoming my greatest desire, not only His blessings

This is the psalmist’s whom have I in heaven but You? It doesn’t arrive all at once. But one day you notice you’d rather have Him than the thing you were asking for.

Not a scorecard

Don’t turn this list into another reason for guilt. It isn’t a test to pass. It’s a way to notice what God is already doing in you. Celebrate the small signs. They’re His work.

Recite this

Love for God shows up in how I treat the people I can see.

Try it this week

Pick the one sign above you most want to see in your life. Choose one concrete thing you’ll do this week that fits it. If it’s sign five, it may be a call to someone you’ve been avoiding.

I will ________________ on ________________, and I’ll tell ________________.