God has had me on this quest to learn how to love for quite some time now. Close to this time last year He was teaching me how to love unconditionally and it totally rocked my world. It wasn't an easy lesson to learn. He was teaching me to love people that have hurt me despite the hurt. My tendency, and I think it's most of our tendencies, is to withhold love from someone when they've hurt me. It's a protection thing. I don't want to just throw my love around when people are just gonna keep hurting me. But if you look at the life of Jesus, He loved. End of story. There was no, oh but in this case the hurt was just too great and He needed to "guard his heart" or protect himself from getting hurt again. No! Even when He was beaten passed recognition and hanging on a cross He still turned His face to Heaven and said "Father forgive them for they don't know what they are doing". That is the greatest example of love, and you know what He got in return? They continued to make fun of Him and hurt Him. There was no happy ending to that day. He died, and His killers were totally ok with it.
Here I am again, reliving what God taught me last year but this time on another level. This time He showed me another aspect of Love. Love associates with EVERYONE! Even if you don't agree with the way a person lives, how they act, how they talk....Love still loves even them! Those people that go to church and say all the right things and then turn around and act totally different, those people who live a lifestyle that doesn't glorify God, the sinners, you know the person you really dislike that is the last person you ever want to love. Our tendency is to say we shouldn't associate with people who could potentially corrupt us. BUT!!!! Let's once again look at what Jesus did, oh that's right! He hung out with the liers, cheaters, adulterers, murderers, and poor people. He didn't care about His reputation. They deserve love just as much as the "perfect" people, if not they need it more! Jesus laid down his reputation to love the unloved.
I have no doubt in my mind that there were times when Jesus didn't feel like loving His enemies, I mean He was human, but the difference was, He knew how to live by the Spirit. He didn't allow His flesh to react the way it wanted to. He always followed what the Spirit said to do. If we are living by the Spirit, He will not only lead us to love those we don't want to love, but He will give us the strength to walk it out. The Holy Spirit never tells you to do something you are not able to do. It may not be easy, but you can do it!
Unconditional love is hard. It's a huge process that I dont know if you can ever even get completely right. Especially when there are people in your life that are just so challenging that they try your ability to love to no end! And we all have someone like that in our lives. But God says were still supposed to love them and Jesus showed us that it's totally possible! And not only Jesus, but the Bible is full of examples of people that learned to love even the most challenging individuals. It is not impossible!
There are so many aspects to love and I'm seeing that the more and more God opens my eyes to them. He's even showed me that my love for Him can be conditional. I mean, how often on a sunday morning your tired or don't like the music or the teaching and you decide God isn't gonna get your worship and praise then? That's conditional love. I'm not happy so I'm not gonna make you happy. Love isn't easy, but it's what we are called to.
When it's all said and done, God isn't gonna ask us how much we did with our life, how much money we made, or how pure and sinless we were....He's gonna ask us, "Did you learn to love?"
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