Love #2

Upon striving to strengthen my love for God on a daily basis I have come to this important lesson:

Lesson #4: Love is contagious.

That seems like a simple concept, but in fact my meaning behind this lesson is a little more complicated.

There are many people in ministry that are hard to love. Some at specific times, and some all the time. We all have our days. But I've learned that when I am focused on loving God, my love for others comes naturally.

It is easier to love the difficult people on the days that my love for God is overflowing.

We know that in Matthew 22 God tells us the greatest commandment, which is to "love the Lord [our] God with all [our] heart, with all [our] soul, and with all [our] mind" [verse 37]. But we also see in verse 39 the second most important commandment being to "love [our] neighbor as [our]self."

I think commandment #2 comes out of commandment #1.. that's why they are listed in this specific order.

So if I am striving to love God with everything that I have and striving to make that known by the way I live my life, then the more I do that, the more I will be overflowing my love onto to others and seeking to love them in the same way. Then as I am loving others, my actions will be noticed by those around me, and they will follow.

I've seen this dynamic concept of love in action, and it has continued to be my motivation to continue in this path.

Whenever we, as Christians, are struggling to love someone in our path, we must simply remember the love that God has for us, and be reminded of how much we love him in return. This should cause us to re-focus ourselves on how to love those tough people that we may come across.

And boy is this kind of love needed in ministry.

Besides just loving those that are hard to love sometimes, I feel so convicted [guilty] lately about not properly or actively loving those around me.

The Bible teaches love to be an action, not a feeling or simply an entity. Rather, love is, like i defined in my last post, a daily choice.

I want to show Christ's love in every detail of my life, and I am not doing a very good job of it. I put myself before others in a lot of aspects. I want to pray for people in my life more than I often do. I want to send thank you letters and birthday cards to people that I care about. I want to actively pursue how I can pray for strangers that I interact with when I am in public, like waiters, pizza delivery guys, check-out counter people, and drive-through employees. How can I do that? How can I leave the fingerprints of God on the lives of those around me in a more practical way?

This is something that has become a daily struggle for me. I battle with the feelings of reluctance to get past myself and my daily list of things to-do and to actually take action in the lives of those around me.

The result is not instant, but actively loving others will eventually cause a Domino effect.

Love is contagious, so why not get up and move in the lives of those around you?