Loving God, Loving Others: The Path to True Freedom

• By candidasullivan
• July 27, 2026
• No Comments

Do you live from love?

It can be so easy to keep score. And to treat other people as they have treated us. They don’t call us, so we don’t call them. They don’t show us love; therefore, we withhold our love. 

It can be a vicious cycle that keeps replaying until we decide to live from love. 

So how do we live from love? 

I believe God gave us a roadmap with these verses. If we learn to live according to these scriptures, our lives would be so full of love it would transform us and spill out onto everyone around us. I believe that if we committed to understanding and living these verses fully, daily, it would completely change our lives.  

Matthew 22:36-39 KJV

36 Master, which is the great commandment in the law?

37 Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.

38 This is the first and great commandment.

39 And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.

Love is not just a feeling we experience. It’s a choice. It goes deeper than emotions and becomes a guide. Love isn’t merely something we feel. Love becomes the place we live from.

The first step of the commandment is to love God with all our heart, soul, and mind. Sometimes our definition of love can be confused. We start loving what we want God to do for us and fail to love Him—the One who created it all and loves us unconditionally. 

Loving God can look like worship when no one is watching. 

Obedience even when I don’t understand. 

It can look like surrender when I want to control.

Repentance because I don’t want my sins to come in between us. 

It is choosing to love God when things don’t go my way and trusting Him amid the heartbreaks and hardships, treasuring our relationship, and honoring Him with my life. And regardless of what happens, good or bad, I return to Him continuously. 

I love this breakdown.

Heart: what I desire

Soul: who I am and how I live

Mind: what I believe and think about

Then we learn to love our neighbors as ourselves. While I might not know how to do this perfectly in myself, God can help me with it. When I’m feeling hurt by someone, unliked, used, and so on, I can ask God to help me to offer forgiveness, understanding, and compassion to others. It’s a choice. We can hold onto bitterness or exchange it for love. 

And as we learn to love others with grace, we also need to remember that God’s grace is for us. We don’t have to punish ourselves for every mistake or live beneath the weight of shame. We can let His love reach the deepest, most heartbreaking parts of us. 

Sweet friends, we don’t have to live a lonely, heartbreaking life. We can choose God’s love every day and go through our days basking in the greatness of our God and His amazing love.