Why Love Grows Cold

Why Love Grows Cold

In one of my last few posts I looked at the loving of self. This is a vital, crucial requirement of our God. We love others as we love ourself not the other way around. If we fail to love ourselves we won’t be able to love others. And in this time and season of the increase of darkness it is going to become more and more difficult to actually stay in love–love for God, love for self, and love of others. The temperature of our love is becoming cold. Yes, the temptation is to let our love grow cold in the face of evil. So I want to look at why love grows cold for a few posts and then maybe return to self-love.

In the end, the love of most will grow cold. Why love grows cold? What affects our love to make it run cold? Love is a hot emotion and passion is anything but frigid.  So what makes the love of most wax cold in the end times?  Oh, it’s the crafty plan of Satan, which shadows us all. In the last days, the love of most will grow cold because of the increase of evil (Matthew 24:12). And most attribute this to becoming evil. Yet I see another side of this, the cooling of our love out of frustration because we’re a daily witness to the evil.

Love Growing Cold

I’m discouraged today because of my awareness of much sin. You can’t pass through this world and not have it cling to you like a slime. Sin stinks, and as it increases, the temptation of the godly is to give in to discouragement and to lose focus. If Satan can dim our hope and take our focus, he has us in his grasp. It becomes like a veil that skews our vision.

Understand this happens to the godliest among us. Continual seeing of sin breaks our spirits down. Look at Moses, a godly man for sure. In the will of God, he held the standard and delivered a nation from the hands of a tyrannical regime. He was appointed as the judge and leader  And in the end, the daily weight of sin buckled his faith and frustrated his resolve (Num. 20:11, 12).

Moses, a great man of faith, struck the rock rather than speaking the word. Why? I believe it was frustration with the people he himself was called to. The sins of many weighed down his soul one day at a time. It was like laying stones on a thatched roof. At some point, the weight will overwhelm and crash through.

So what I am seeing is that Satan’s plan is to weigh our hearts down, slowly and undetectably, until our hearts cool and wax cold. It isn’t like passionate love gets cold overnight. It cools by degrees over time.

Making Love Grow Cold

So what’s the answer? Well, I know what it’s not. For me, it’s not retreating as a monk to a holy rock pedestal, wearing a diaper on the top of a mountain. I can’t leave the world to be alone, because at the end of the day, even though I’d be freed from others, I’d still be there with all my mess. So what is the answer? Glory!

In honest dependence, He is the only one who can lift my face. When the weight of sin weighs down my heart and discourages my pursuit, I turn to Him. It’s not my weight to carry. It’s not my burden to bear. He’s the resolve of my heart and the hope of my walk. I look to Him, in all my desperation, within my disheartened state, and He will take up my leaded heart and discouraged thoughts. And in the place of my weight of despair, He will reveal His weight of GLORY. Not by my demand or even desperate need, but in His faithfulness, according to His timing.

Cold Love

And He rescued righteous Lot, greatly worn out and distressed by the wanton ways of the ungodly and lawless–For that just man, living [there] among them, tortured his righteous soul every day with what he saw and heard of [their] unlawful and wicked deeds–
2 Peter 2:7-8 (AMP)

 “So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison.”
2 Corinthians 4:16-17

But when one turns to the Lord, the veil is removed. Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.
 2 Corinthians 3:16-18