Love

Love.

We talk about it all the time and especially this time of year. Show God's love. Love each other. Let live and let love. It's good. Love is good. It is the highest commandment according to Jesus Himself! In the midst of all the love messages, I am sitting here, finding it hard to love people like Jesus does.

I freely and readily admit that I (and I suspect many others, including many Christians) am judgmental, snobby at times and downright assumptive. I can get catty in two seconds flat and I frequently leave a certain someone's (or several someones) company whining and nitpicking. I desperately want to be like Christ, but He is none of those things I just listed. In fact, He is the total opposite. He is kind, honest, accepting, understanding and patient. He is a beautiful and perfect Savior to redeem all my shortcomings.

I call myself a follower of Christ and I call myself a disciple of Christ. Am I really a disciple if I have all these problems loving difficult people? I share His gospel, but is it really out of love or do I just want to be right? Ouch. I asked God to poke holes in my pride and get rid of it, so here I am. I'm faced with this tough question: Do I share the truths of Christ because I long for salvation for all the world or do I really just want to be proven right about Christ? 

God is so patient with me as I wrestle with this. I was awakened to something I hadn't noticed before as I read the passages in Matthew 13 about the sowers. Particularly, the first parable really showed me something that I had never considered.

Matthew 13:3-8 "And He spoke many things to them in parables, saying, 'Behold, the sower went out to sow; and as he sowed, some seeds fell beside the road, and the birds came and ate them up. Others fell on the rocky places, where they did not have much soil; and immediately they sprang up, because they had no root, they withered away. Others fell among the thorns, and the thorns came up and choked them out. And others fell on the good soil and yielded a crop, some a hundredfold, some sixty and some thirty. He who has ears, let him hear.'"

I was so struck by what the Lord showed me that I feel so compelled to share it. The Lord is referring to sowing the word of the kingdom into the world and the various people that respond to it. Don't miss this: God did not only plant His Word on those that would accept it well and produce good fruit. Do you see it? God, in His everlasting and neverending love for all people and His desire for all to come to repentance and not perish, does not withhold His Word from any person, even knowing whether they will reject or accept. Would you offer your most precious possession to someone who you knew would reject it? God offered up His Son, Jesus Christ, to us and even to those who reject Him. Are you as taken aback as I am?

The conviction this put on my heart is overwhelming. I often, for all the reasons I listed above, hold back from sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ with people simply because I think they will reject Him. What's the point if they won't accept? God, in His mercy, wishes that all people have ample opportunity to come to repentance in order to share eternity with Him. God, because of His great love, allows for sin to corrupt the world and to hurt many people for so long because during that time, all people are given ample opportunity to be saved. 

Think of Lot and his family. They lived among the people in Sodom (and we all know about their sin...) and remained righteous in God's eyes. Sodom was allowed more time before their judgment so that Lot and his family would be spared. Don't you see the picture of what is happening today? God is waiting patiently and allowing sin to continue so that all people would have the opportunity to be saved. 

That kind of patience is overwhelming. That is the kind of patience I desire for myself in order to show God's love through me. My witness is not my perfect presentation of the gospel or me going to church every Sunday or me reading my Bible. My witness is my love for all people. Since I so desire to spread the good news of Jesus Christ, the first thing I have to do is love. That means putting aside all the judgment, snobbiness (fairly certain I just made that up), and whining to show God's real love to all people.

Let's throw all the hypocrisy, malice, and evil aside and start loving people the way God does. 

Share your most cherished verses as encouragement instead of being negative. One of my favorites is His promise from Isaiah 25:8. "He will swallow up death for all time, And the Lord God will wipe tears away from all faces, And He will remove the reproach of His people from all the earth; For the Lord has spoken." 

Pray for people out loud and by name and praise God always. James 5:13 "Is anyone among you suffering? Then he must pray. Is anyone cheerful? He is to sing praises."

Free people from sin by sharing Christ. Hebrews 2:14-15 "Therefore, since the children share in flesh and blood, He Himself likewise partook of the same, that through death He might render powerless him who had the power of death, that is, the devil, and might free those who through fear of death were subject to slavery all their lives."  

Do good things for all people, regardless of the outcome and expecting nothing in return. 1 John 3:18 "Little children, let us not love with word or with tongue, but in deed and truth."

I get chills thinking about the revolutionary effects of Christians loving all people like God does. Unconditionally, expecting nothing and freely given, as we have freely received.