In reading The Great Divorce recently I came across an interesting distinction between what love is and what it is not. Loving someone in purity and truth means you allow them freedom, even if that means losing them. Your desire for their well being exceeds your desire to have them with you. You see this in a parent who doesn’t want to allow their child to move out of the house because they “love” them so much. What they really have for their child is not love, but neediness, and love and neediness are not compatible. God doesn’t need us, but He desires to bless us. There is no passage in the Bible that says that because God loved us so much, He prevented us from sinning. But it does say that because he loved us so much, He gave (John 3:16). We can learn from God that loving someone and desiring to possess them are actually different. When you love someone, your desire isn’t to gratify your desire to have them, but to give what is best for them for their benefit. Desiring to have someone close to you, regardless of what is best for them, is still rooted in selfishness. There is truly no place for our willfulness in this relationship with God. It is all about surrendering our rights and desires to God, and trusting Him to take care of them and do what is best for us.