Fear God Or Love God?

I recently was going through a 2-week old DAWN when my eyes caught this small article titled "Love God or Fear God?" It seemed interesting so I pursued my eyes on reading the rest of it. What I read hit me with a brand new light. The article talks about our concept of Allah and how we tend to fear Him more than we love Him. The truth is, ever since we are little, we are told by our parents "Don't do this, God will be mad at you and will put you in hell". Atleast, ever since I was little, I had this very vague idea of God sitting on a throne and punishing the wrong-doers. I was always afraid of Him and scared to be punished, thus I was constantly disturbed and afraid whenever I failed to do what was told to me that I must do in order to please God.
Today, we tend to hold so strongly to our fear of Him, that we fail to actually love Him. Our whole lives encircle around hell and heaven but not around Allah. We do what we do in fear of Him, but we are oblivious to the fact that if we were truly to love Allah, we would need not to worry about the rest. We look at our daily prayers as an obligatory duty we must perform in order to reach heaven, when we should actually be seeking nearness to Allah through these prayers, not heaven. Ofcourse, if one is close to Allah, he will most surely attain Paradise. Personally, I feel that this phenomenon of heaven an hell was basically set up by Allah as a mere path, the eventual thing that people of a higher spiritual level should seek is actually the love of Allah.
Alot of things we do today, alot of the practices we condemn, are basically because we think that Allah will punish us. We never say "If you want Allah to love you, do this" instead, we say ot ourselves "Do this if you want to be saved from Allah's wrath". Isn't the greater purpose of life to find Allah's love? Obviously, when we love someone, we would never do anything that does not please them, so eventally, the wrath part will go away if we truly look for the the Love of Allah. Allah states that His love is the intensity of the love of 70 mothers. Also, in many parts of the Quran, his love for us is sometimes emphasized more than his wrath. Thus, our main goal in life should be to love Him, not to be scared of the wrath we'd get on the Day of Judgement. Ofcourse, that should be kept in mind; however, the higher purpose should always be to love Him, and if we truly give ourselves to love Him, paradise and hell would mean nothing.