Day 7: Love Someone as Your Neighbor

Yesterday was more about the attitude of love we need to have. Today's is about the actions of love that we need to pour out in our lives.

An important thing to remember is that we are still called to love our "neighbor," which excludes no one. Jesus loved everyone that crossed His path. His expectation for us is no less. "He simply loved people as the opportunity arose during the normal traffic patterns of his life." And He loved people one at a time, and took the time to love them! Everyone from the woman at the well to Zacchaeus to the little children, Jesus took the time to address them all and share the love of God with them.

So. . . the question is: who is that woman at the well? Who is your Zacchaeus? And are you willing to open up to them to show them something they've never seen before?

The other important point this chapter makes is that we also need to spend time alone with God. If we don't have the vertical relationship, we won't have success in the horizontal ones. We can't start truly loving people unless we know love, and God is love, so why wouldn't we spend time with Him?

Think about that for a second: God is love. We try to make love out to be other things, human things: how much money we can spend, how many things we can shower on someone else, what feelings we get from someone else. But what did Jesus do? He gave people time and shared the good news with them. His life was a life of service. He didn't try to buy people with material things; He reached out to where they were and touched them with sincerity. Jesus cares about relationships- otherwise He wouldn't have died for all of us! That is still so mind blowing- that someone would choose to die to cover up our imperfections! All of them! Forever! If that's not love, then I don't know what is.

Point to Ponder: Consistent love can only be expressed one opportunity at a time.
And it only becomes consistent when we realize how many opportunities present themselves and what potential God is putting in front of us.

Verse to Remember: 1 John 4:11- "Dear friends, since God loved us that much, we surely ought to love each other."
Loving others becomes a natural response when we start to consider everything He has done for us, including putting said others into our lives! I don't believe that the friendships, connections, colleagues, family members, etc. we have are accidental. Sometimes we might not feel like we got put in the right place with the right people, but that is the perfect opportunity to rely on God to show you how to love that person/those people! On the other side, when we find people that are easy to love, we need to be careful that we don't become complacent and take them for granted. We can use the excuse of "but they know that I love them, so it's OK!" to try and cover up when we abuse friendships, but eventually that abuse will catch up, and the strength of that "loving friendship" will be tested. That's not to say that having a friendship tested means that someone has done something wrong on purpose, or that that trial is a bad thing, but we really shouldn't be going out of our way to see how far we can push people before they snap. That's not love, that's manipulation, and it's selfish. But when we focus on the other person, God finds an amazing way in which they provide a wonderful friendship in return, better than we could have ever gotten by just using said person.

Question to Consider: How can I show love to the person right in front of me- today?
Taken literally, I think I am doing that right now (I'm staying with Mr. Reggie again- we left the house today! And now we're listening to Christmas music. Exciting stuff). Figuratively. . . I think I need to be careful of that attitude I was just speaking of above. I'm not using/abusing anyone, but I do need to be more active in showing my appreciation for those people in my life whom God has chosen to give me relationship opportunities. There isn't much worse than being ungrateful in the face of an amazing gift, and God has blessed me with so much down here. Some of my "new" friendships down here feel like second nature (after all, I didn't come to SBC until September of last year! So I haven't really been down here all that long) so I need to make sure I'm not becoming prideful and testing my boundaries. After all, it's not like I really sought out these people- God brought me to them. And that's the story I'm sticking to.