Love Each Other

It’s easy to love people who are likeable and nice. It’s harder to love people who are a bit hateful, unkind or moody. There are some people it’s easy to love and others take lots of discipline and it’s hard. There are people who’ve hurt me and it’s harder to love them. There are people who love me and it’s super easy to love them too. The Lord didn’t put a disclaimer or an asterisk (“*”) on love. He said to love EVERYONE and that means everyone. When I read this passage, I had faces come to my mind of people who are hard to love. Check this out….

⁷ Dear friends, I am not writing a new commandment for you; rather it is an old one you have had from the very beginning. This old commandment—to love one another—is the same message you heard before. ⁸ Yet it is also new. Jesus lived the truth of this commandment, and you also are living it. For the darkness is disappearing, and the true light is already shining.

⁹ If anyone claims, “I am living in the light,” but hates a fellow believer, that person is still living in darkness. ¹⁰ Anyone who loves a fellow believer is living in the light and does not cause others to stumble. ¹¹ But anyone who hates a fellow believer is still living and walking in darkness. Such a person does not know the way to go, having been blinded by the darkness. (1 John 2:7-11 NLT)

I may not always understand my brothers and sisters, but I should NEVER hate them.  I have some brothers and sisters who have misbehaved as they have harmed the name Christian and it sends me sideways. I have to be very careful NOT to hate. In fact, love calls for action on my part to gently confront them.

I feel like the darkness is always very close by to move in when I stumble in this area. It is easy to justify my position with myself, but when I read this passage of scripture, it’s crystal clear. Loving others is also me setting an example of how Christ followers honor the Lord.

I have some issues to resolve with fellow believers. It’s mainly my issues. I need to forgive. I need to love them. I need to move on from the hurt they’ve inflicted upon me and others. I need to walk in the light of Love. Love chases the darkness out. Love also heals my hurts. God loved first – He showed me how to love without strings attached and He calls upon me to do the same.

Pressing On!

Dwayne