I’m pretty sure we can all agree that love is not only beautiful but powerful. Love is more powerful than anger, pain, and definitely more powerful than hate. Love is a necessity and a want. I love talking about love because I just love. love. Since I’ve become a christian my desire to love people has gotten stronger. I find myself in positions all the time where I can’t help myself, I love you. I can’t hold grudges, it doesn’t sit right with me to stay angry, or waste my time hating people. I’m just a sappy love ball, i can’t help it and I love it. I’ve found that since I’ve experienced the love of God and understood what it means to be loved by God, I want everyone to feel this type of love, so why not give it to them?
-Dyamond
We all deserve love, and I’m not talking about love in a romantic way, (we will get to that subject later in the year I promise). No matter who you are, what you look like, what your social or financial status is, where you came from, what you’ve done in your life. You deserve to be loved, unconditionally. Love doesn’t give up or end. Loving someone unconditionally means no matter what happens, there is nothing someone can do to make us stop loving them. That’s how God loves us, He never stops loving us, There’s nothing we can do to make Him love us less. He can’t help Himself, he loves us, even before we loved Him. Some people will never love God but He still loves them. It’s the same with loving people, sometimes we have to love people even though we know they will never love us back. That’s unconditional love, loving even though we know it will never be reciprocated. We don’t love just the people who love us, we love everyone. In the same way Jesus loved everyone He came across, it did not matter if they were Jews, Gentiles, Samaritans, tax collectors, thieves, murderers. Whoever they were Jesus came to save them as well. He went into the homes of people who were considered criminals and outcast. Jesus love is unconditional to all people, and therefore as we live like Christ we shall also love like Christ.
1 Corinthians 13:4-8
Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away.
Mark 2:1-12
And when he returned to Capernaum after some days, it was reported that he was at home. And many were gathered together, so that there was no more room, not even at the door. And he was preaching the word to them. And they came, bringing to him a paralytic carried by four men. And when they could not get near him because of the crowd, they removed the roof above him, and when they had made an opening, they let down the bed on which the paralytic lay. And when Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, “Son, your sins are forgiven.” Now some of the scribes were sitting there, questioning in their hearts, “Why does this man speak like that? He is blaspheming! Who can forgive sins but God alone?” And immediately Jesus, perceiving in his spirit that they thus questioned within themselves, said to them, “Why do you question these things in your hearts? Which is easier, to say to the paralytic, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Rise, take up your bed and walk’? But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins”—he said to the paralytic— “I say to you, rise, pick up your bed, and go home.” And he rose and immediately picked up his bed and went out before them all, so that they were all amazed and glorified God, saying, “We never saw anything like this!”
This passage is one of my favorites, and not for the obvious reasons. I want to focus on the four men in this story. These four men were the reason the man who was paralyzed received healing. They went out of their way to make sure this man got to Jesus. The could have left Him there when they got in the first time and said “we tried.”shrugged and walked away. Instead the did something so loving that Jesus had to honor their faith in the situation. These four men were carrying a paralyzed man on a bed, and when they could not get in through the door they went to the roof. When they got to the roof they put a hole in it, as hole big enough so that the man could fit through it. Then it says they ‘let down the bed.’ they didn’t drop it, they let it down, gently, making sure that he was safe. I’m not sure how long it took for the men to do all of this, but all I know is that they saw a need and met it. They knew that this man could not get to Jesus alone, so they took him. They went through all that trouble because they knew Jesus would heal him, they had faith that He could and would be healed.
Sometimes loving people is having faith for them. Sometimes we have to go out of our way for people, not because it makes us look like a good person but because we are here serve and love others. Sometimes love means sacrifice, we have to put ourselves on the line for others. We have to love people who we don’t agree with, we have to love the people we don’t want to be around all the time, we have to love the people who do us wrong and hurt us. Loving people isn't always pretty, but it is so much better than carrying around the burden of hate.
1 John 4:20
If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen.
How can we hate our neighbor who we see everyday, and profess to love God, whom we have never seen. Loving people is more that just a phrase, it’s a verb,an action word. We are always so quick to say, “I love you because I have to.” But just like anything else love is a choice. God chooses to love us, even when we give Him reason not to. We must simply choose love over hate, we must choose to love people, even when the make loving them the hardest challenge of life (so dramatic, I know). I know that some people are hard to love, but just imagine how hard we are to love, and how we still receive love unconditionally. We were all hard to love at one point in our lives. Not only do we deserve love, and want love, we need love. The worst feeling in the world into feel like no one loves you. We go through stages in our lives sometimes where we feel like everyone hates us, or that we have been cut off from the world. We need love, we need to know that someone will always be there, that in our lowest points. We need to know that no matter what we do we will always be loved. If we know that, that is what we need as human beings then we should be giving that love to our neighbors.
Mark 12:31
The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”
The second greatest commandment is to love our neighbors as ourselves, the first is loving God with our heart, mind, and soul. As Christians our entire foundation is built on love. We talked earlier about loving ourselves, and we love ourselves so much, more than we'll ever know or admit. What if we take all the love we give ourselves and shower someone else with it. We learn to treat others well because we know how we want to be treated. We learn to love others because we know how we are and how we want to be loved.
If we do not love as Christians, can we truly call ourselves Christian? As I mentioned earlier some people are hard to love, some people cannot accept love, some people just are not loving. The way we love people should never be impacted by the way they love others, or the way they accept or refuse love. When you love someone, there is nothing they can do about it. When you love someone you cannot control it, you love them rather you agree with them or not, whether you get along with them all the time or not, you just love them. The same way God loves us, is the same type of love we should have towards His people. We must learn how to love people with no strings attached, no conditions, no forfeiting, none of that. I love you, end of story and there’s nothing you can do about it.
Reflection
- Love looks different to everyone, we all give and experience love in different ways, what are some of the ways you have experienced love?
- What does loving others look liek to you? It’s different for everyone, but how do you love?
- How do you love the people that are hard to love?
- Just for fun, if you know them, what are your love languages?
Prayer Time
Respond to God, and talk to HIm about what it means to love His people. Ask God to help you see others through His eyes. Love on as many people as you can. Ask God to show you how to love unconditionally. Remember that prayer is just a conversation between you and God.
No comments:
Post a Comment