Lust is when a person has a strong sexual desire for someone. Love is feeling romantic and most of the time, sexually attracted to someone who is important to you.
How can you make the difference between love and lust ? Love embraces a person as a whole entity. This means that when in love, you feel like seeing the loved one often. You miss that person when you haven't seen him/her for a long time, you care about the things he/she likes or dislikes in life, in general. You want that person to be happy. When you love someone you want him/her close to you and sometimes, it means to express this love within a sexual activity but it can also mean to simply show your affection, your tenderness toward him/her.
When a person lust after someone, it means he/she is mainly interested in having sex with him/her. There is less care about how the other feels in other parts of his/her life. A person who lusts after you will not show a lot of interest in what you do for a living, what are your hobbies, what you like or dislike in general. In lust, the care is concentrated on the sexual pleasure one has.
Love honors, values and seeks the best for the beloved. It focuses on the other person. It's selfless, sacrificial and inseparable from commitment. Lust, on the other hand, seeks to use things or people to meet its needs and gratify its desires. It focuses inward on itself, is inherently selfish, and rejects commitment.
Love with commitment is clearly very expensive and hard work. It requires honor, respect, forgiveness and sacrifice. However it's the road out of the loneliness, suspicion and despair that plagues our culture. If we substitute lust for love we end up with a meaningless sensation which eventually loses its novelty and can never satisfy beyond the physical.
I believe when you fall in love, the feeling is different for everyone. However, i do believe that deep in your heart and in your mind, you'll know for sure when it's true.
