The way to loving God is through reflecting on His actions and His creation. When we recognize the wondrous wisdom underlying them, we will yearn to know Him, and will love Him.

What is the way to loving Him?…When a person contemplates His great and wonderful actions and creations, and recognizes in them His wisdom, which is inestimable and infinite, he will immediately love, praise, and glorify, and will be exceedingly desirous of knowing the great name. (Rambam, Mishneh Torah, Hilkhot Yesodei HaTorah 2:1)

Love of God is present in the heart of every Jew; we inherited it from our patriarchs. First we recognize that God is the source of life. We then recognize that God is our Father, and we contemplate this constantly. Even if initially this seems like a product of our imagination, it is the truth, and practicing such thinking makes the love come naturally.

A person loves God as he loves his life:

Love of God belongs equally to every Jewish soul and is an inheritance from our patriarchs. This is what the Zohar wrote concerning the verse “With my essence, I desired You at night” (Isaiah 26:9), that I desire and crave You like one who yearns for his own life. When he is weak and afflicted, he longs to return to himself. Likewise, when he goes to sleep, he longs for his essence to return to him when he awakens from his slumber. So too, I desire and crave the light of the infinite One, blessed be He, namely, true life, and to draw it within me through engaging in Torah when I wake up from my night’s sleep. For the Torah and the Holy One, blessed be He, are one and the same [so clinging to Torah is the same as clinging to God].

A person loves God as he loves his father:

An even greater love than this, which is concealed also in every Jewish person as an inheritance from our patriarchs, is…to become accustomed, in one’s speech, heart, and mind, to that fact that the infinite One, blessed be He, is our true Father and the source of our life, and to arouse toward Him the love a son has for his father. When one practices this [way of thinking] constantly, his habit will become his nature.

This is absolute truth:

Even if it seems to him as though this is imaginary, he must not be concerned, because it is absolutely true as an intrinsic aspect in the sense of concealed love. The advantage of its being revealed is that it brings about action: Studying Torah and observing mitzvot in order to bring pleasure to God, like a son serving his father. (Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi, Tanya, Likutei Amarim 44)

Further reading: For more on love of God, see A Concise Guide to the Sages, p. 232.

How is it possible to command people to love God? Can an emotion be commanded? The emotion in this case does not need to be generated; all one needs to do is to reveal the concealed love that already exists within us.

We need to understand how the language of command could apply to love. It is because by nature there is concealed love within every Jew. The commandment “You shall love” (Deuteronomy 6:5) does not concern love itself, as love itself is present, by nature, in every Jew. Rather, the commandment is to bring the light of this love out of concealment, so that it is revealed. (Rabbi Shmuel Schneersohn, Sefer HaMa’amarim 5626, p. 225)

Further reading: For more on the relationship between a father and his children, and its resemblance to the relationship between God and the Jewish people, see pp. 28, 222.