How to Love God: Trading Empty Religion for a Real Relationship
About this audiobook
Can you love God and even enjoy Him when you struggle with sin and feel like you're constantly falling short? If your faith feels more like pressure than relationship, you're not alone. You can move beyond guilt and performance into a life-giving connection with a God who isn't disappointed in you—but invites you to know Him right where you are.
If you've ever felt like something is missing in your relationship with God, you're not alone. Often, we learn how to perform for God but not how to love Him. Somewhere along the way, faith became a checklist: read your Bible, say your prayers, join a small group, serve the community, try harder, do better. We do honorable things, but beneath all the activity, we feel distant, exhausted, and unsure if we truly know the God we claim to follow.
How to Love God confronts this quiet tension and offers a better way forward—one built not on performance but on relationship. With honesty, humor, and biblical depth, Jonathan "JP" Pokluda unpacks the greatest commandment—to love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength—and shows why it's not a burden to carry but an invitation to receive.
Through powerful storytelling and practical insight, JP reveals that God isn't waiting for perfection—He's inviting you into His presence to find freedom in Christ and to discover joy and peace that are beyond our comprehension. In this book, you'll discover how to:
- break free from performance-based Christianity
- replace shame and spiritual pressure with God's grace
- move from knowing about God to actually knowing Him
- experience real intimacy with God—not just routine religious habits
- obey and serve from the Spirit's overflow, not out of obligation
- find lasting satisfaction in God's presence, security in His love
It's time to stop checking boxes and start cultivating a relationship that changes everything. When you truly understand God's heart for you—His delight, His nearness, His love—you won't just follow Him; you'll love Him more than ever.
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About the author
Jonathan “JP” Pokluda is the lead pastor of Harris Creek Baptist Church in Waco, TX. He was formerly the leader of The Porch in Dallas, which grew to be the largest weekly young adult gathering of its kind in the country. JP didn’t come to understand the grace of the gospel until his early twenties after being involved in different denominational churches his entire life. This ignited a desire in him to inspire young adults to radically follow Jesus Christ and unleash them to change the world. He is the cohost of the Becoming Something podcast and the author of the bestselling books Your Story Has a Villain, Why Do I Do What I Don’t Want to Do?, Outdated, and Welcome to Adulting, as well as the Welcome to Adulting Survival Guide and Welcoming the Future Church. JP’s partner in ministry is his wife, Monica, and together they disciple their children, Presley, Finley, and Weston.
