When one hears the word "love," one thinks of a very specific kind of emotion.

Usually it brings to mind the sense of loving someone romantically. But it could also bring to mind friendship love, family love, or spiritual love. Possibly you could be thinking of it in the context of things, like "I love that book," or "I love that color." We use this word so often, that it seems to be just thrown around, in randomness, in meaninglessness. What does it actually mean?

It is defined as "a personal or warm attachment or deep affection for another person."

Commonly, there is a impersonal type of love and an interpersonal type of love. The Ancient Greeks identified four types of love: storge, a familial type of love for kinship; philia, a friendship type of love; eros, romantic or sexual love; and agape, a divine type of love. While we can all know and feel the first three, the one that is hard to come by is the agape kind of love.

This refers to love that is greater than oneself, that is directed towards God, that encompasses us in return. "For God so LOVED the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life." This well known verse really captures and explains the essence of what agape love really consists of.

But it is difficult to grasp why that we, as humans, who are so imperfect in all that we do, capable of not only being loved by others, but of a God who is the omniscent Creator of everything. It literally blows our minds.

But He claims that He loves us.

In Romans 8:38 God actually says that "neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus Our Lord." Wow. How is this so?

We can't comprehend this kind of love because we can't find it on earth. When a guy or girl says "I love you," it's impossible to know what their words actually mean until they act on it. Or talking about a friend, saying, "I love her," which is heard so often in that context it is almost trite. Even when we say we love our families, there are times that test our patience. But God's love isn't like that. His love is unconditional, shameless, and completely free.

There have been times in my life I have struggled with love.

I've had to deal with the hardships of family love, with friendship loves that ended up being unfulfilling, with problems coming from romantic love and feelings I've had for people. I have struggled with not only philia, storge, and eros types of love but I have struggled even with loving myself. So it can be so incredibly easy to sit back and think "how can God ever love me if I don't even love myself?" But He just does.

That's it. He loves us, no questions asked, no strings attached. We don't have to do anything. We don't have to even understand it. Because agape love is the most powerful of them all.

Love is a source of life.

We wouldn't keep going if there weren't things or people that we loved. Just like how God wouldn't be God if He didn't love us. Because love is life, and God is life.

Sitting back and relaxing in the thought that God loves you regardless of your circumstances or actions is so humbling and relieving. It's too easy to get caught up in negative mental cycles, thinking "I'm not good enough I'm not good enough I'm not good enough." Because everyone deserves love.

God gives you what he knows you need. So once you realize it, it changes you.

So next time you look in the mirror and you tell yourself that you don't deserve or need love just remember that the God who made the heavens and the oceans and all the birds in the trees and animals on the Earth also made you, and deemed you worthy.