Have you ever felt the love of God? Would you like to? Then let me tell you the key. Believe it! Yes, it’s that simple. Feelings follow thoughts. In psychology this is sometimes called the ABC paradigm. Let me explain. In this model, A stands for an activating event, B stands for a belief about that event, and C stands for the consequent emotion. People are used to associating their feelings with events. For example, someone may say, “I feel sad (that’s C) because I didn’t get the job (A),” or “I feel angry (C) because my request was denied (A),” or “I feel anxious (C) because I have to sit an exam (A).” In each of these examples, the person associates their emotion with a particular event. Whilst it’s true that feelings are related to events, there’s a little more to it than that, and that’s B (what we believe about the event). Think about it for a moment. Imagine an event. It could be anything, but let’s take the example of rain. Two people look at the same rain, but each feels very different. Why? What’s going on? The activating event (A) is the same, but the consequent emotion (C) is different. The reason for the difference in emotion is found in each person’s thinking, for each has a different belief about the rain. One of them is a gardener who believes that the rain will be excellent for the garden and consequently feels very happy when it rains. But the other is a golfer, for whom the rain is an enemy preventing him or her from playing the game they love. Can you see the difference that our perception makes? Apply this paradigm to God’s love and we start to understand a little better why some feel it, and some don’t. In this context the activating event (A) is God’s love. The person who believes that God loves them (that’s B: their belief) will feel loved by God (that’s C, the consequent emotion). In contrast, the person who does not believe that God loves them or maybe believes that God loves everybody else but not them, will feel unloved by God (the consequent emotion, C). If you are not feeling the love of God, it’s likely that you are not really believing that God loves you. It’s not enough to believe that God is love. We need to believe that God loves us.