There’s a love so high
(That you cannot get over)
That same love’s so wide
(It’ll take forever just to get around it)
But love died somewhere, behind that cross you wear, you’re afraid when you look at me
That ain’t real love, not the kind from above
But there’s a friend of mine
(That stays closer than a brother)
Love laid down His life
(So why do we still fight one another?)
All this hate I see, on the TV screen,
In my country ‘tis of thee
God help us to love, the way that you love me
BRIDGE:
This world is weeping, hurting, broken, and begging for change
But still we marching, praying, dying, and things stay the same
When will we see, til everyone’s free, there’ll never be peace between you and me
God your love is the cure, for the rich and the poor, God please will you open our eyes
Cause I want a love so high
(That you cannot get over)
And I want a love so wide
(It’ll take forever just to get around it)
But it don’t come cheap, it takes everything,
To make love more than a dream
God help us to love (God help us to love)
God help us to love (This world needs your love) We need your love (What we need now is love)
Fill us with your love, Lord (Unconditional love)
We need your love (Rain down on us, your love) We need your love (Fill us please with your love) God help me to love, the way that you love me
Help Us To Love
Help Us To Love Song Meaning, Biblical Reference and Inspiration
Released on August 31, 2018, Tori Kelly's song "Help Us To Love" arrived as a standout piece on her gospel album, "Hiding Place." This project, born from a deep desire to explore her faith through music, saw Tori collaborating with legendary figures in gospel, grounding the work in rich spiritual tradition while showcasing her remarkable contemporary artistry. "Help Us To Love" specifically feels like a genuine prayer set to music, reflecting a profound understanding that the most fundamental command from God – to love one another – is also one we constantly fall short of fulfilling on our own. It's less a narrative song and more an earnest appeal, a communal cry for divine assistance in living out the love that Christ exemplifies and calls us to.
The song's core message is a humble recognition of our human limitation in truly loving others sacrificially and unconditionally. It acknowledges the difficulty of extending grace, forgiving wrongs, and seeing people through God's eyes in a world often marked by division and hurt. The very title is a petition, asking for supernatural help to accomplish something that is both simple in concept and incredibly complex in practice. This resonates powerfully with the biblical truth that while we are commanded to love (John 13:34-35, Matthew 22:37-39), our natural capacity is flawed by sin. We are told to love our neighbors as ourselves, but often our 'selves' are not rightly oriented, and loving difficult neighbors feels impossible. The song captures this struggle, presenting it before the only One who can perfect love in us.
Analyzing the song through the lens of Scripture reveals its deep biblical roots. The call for God's help in loving echoes the teaching found in 1 John 4:7-8, which states that "love comes from God" and "whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love." We cannot generate divine love from within ourselves; it must be received from Him and flow through us. Similarly, Galatians 5:22-23 lists love as the very first "fruit of the Spirit." This implies that true, biblical love is not merely an emotion or an act of willpower, but a supernatural byproduct of God's Spirit working within a transformed heart. The song's plea, "Help us to love," becomes a prayer for the Spirit's work, aligning our hearts with God's nature so that love becomes a more natural expression of who we are becoming in Christ. It's a prayer for the humility described in Philippians 2:3-4, asking God to help us value others above ourselves and look out for their interests, not just our own. Even the challenging command to love our enemies (Luke 6:27-36) finds its quiet place within this broader request – help us to love, meaning help us to love *everyone*, including those we find difficult. The song is, in essence, a musical parallel to the prayer for a new heart found in Ezekiel 36:26, a heart capable of walking in God's ways, including the way of love.
The strength of "Help Us To Love" lies in its vulnerable sincerity and its direct appeal to the divine source of love. It bypasses flowery language to speak plainly about a universal human need within the Christian walk. The musical arrangement and Tori’s delivery serve this message beautifully, creating an atmosphere of earnest supplication without being overly dramatic. It feels authentic, like the honest prayer of someone wrestling with the gap between the command to love and the reality of everyday relationships. By focusing on this fundamental need for divine intervention in our ability to love, the song serves as an important reminder that the Christian life is not lived by our own strength but through reliance on God. It encourages reflection on our own shortcomings in love and inspires us to join in the same prayer, trusting that the God who *is* love delights in helping His children walk in it more fully. It’s a song that doesn’t offer easy answers but points us to the ultimate Answerer, reminding us that with God’s help, we can indeed grow into the loving people He calls us to be.
