Day 2: You Can Love People
“Love your enemies! Do good to them. Lend to them without expecting to be repaid. Then your reward from heaven will be very great, and you will truly be acting as children of the Most High, for he is kind to those who are unthankful and wicked.” Luke 6:35, NLT
The love of God that flows from the heart of a believer is as different from human love as day is from night. Human love is so changeable. Human love is little more than a phony, emotional counterfeit of God’s love. It’s dependent on whim and feelings. It says, “If you’re nice to me and give me what I want, I’ll love you. But if you don’t, I won’t.”
God’s love isn’t like that. It’s constant. It’s unconditional. The chief ingredient of the God-kind of love is self-sacrifice for the benefit of the one loved. It is the type of love that will continue to love people whether or not it receives a response. God’s love is not self-seeking. It is self-giving.
God doesn’t just love the lovely. He loves the unlovely, too. His love leads people to Jesus. That’s the way God loves us, and that’s the way He expects us to love each other. That means when someone treats us badly, we don’t get huffy about it. We don’t get fretful and resentful. Instead, we treat them kindly, pray for them and refuse to think about how they did us wrong.
Walking in love means we lay down our own rights and look out for the other person’s rights instead. When we’re tired and under pressure, we set aside our own feelings and behave kindly and gently to those around us.
“That sounds pretty tough,” you might say. “I’m not sure I could trust myself to do that!”
Then don’t trust yourself. Trust God to do it through you! Say, “LORD, I can’t love this way on my own, so I’m trusting in You today. As I step out in faith by speaking and acting in a loving way, I’ll expect Your love within me to come shining through!”
Just rely on The LORD, and you’ll be amazed how He can love others through you!
KCM
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