How to Love Your Neighbor - Part 2

Love.

It's a word we hear often. It gets floated around constantly.

We love food, outfits, family, TV shows, friends, ideas, places.... The list could go on and on. In some languages there are different words to reveal different meanings of love, but in good ole' English, we just have one. Therefore, our love of fictional characters, apple pie, a sports team, our husband, children, and God get the same word. This seems wrong to me. Even though I've used the word love in each of these cases, plus many more. (Maybe we should start using those different words again, or make up our own.)

The word love also gets misused regularly. People use this word to lie and get what they want. To get ahead. To misuse someone. As an excuse to enable someone in sin. Or put blanket approval on things that are abhorant to a holy God.

"God is love and He loves everyone," is a prominent saying. While this is true, God's love is a perfect and holy love that's always for our good, even if that means disciplining us. I think, perhaps, we don't read enough of the Old Testament, of the Prophets, or maybe just not enough of Romans, to understand the full definition of God's love.

God's love is a perfect and holy love that is always for our good, even if that means disciplining us. Click to tweet

Only through continual abiding in God's Word and presence can we understand what He means when He commands us to love.

I feel like I've been going down a rabbit trail before actually getting to today's focus, but before we can talk about how to love our neighbor, it's important to understand who God says is our neighbor and what God means by love.

In the verse where God commands us to love our neighbor as ourselves (which is also found in the Old Testament), the word used is "agapao." Agapao is a social or moral love. A love not prompted by gooey feelings or mutual benefit, but a love of another person created in God's image simply because God created that person in His image. Just like He did me. Just like He did you.

God calls us to love others because He loves each one of us the same and we each have the same value to Him. Click to tweet

So how do we love others?


Our spouse...our children...our parents...our siblings...our in-laws...our church family...our geographical neighbors...our friends...strangers...homeless children on the other side of the world...homeless alcoholics in our cities...the difficult co-worker...

How do we love others - no matter whether they're in our lives for 5 minutes or 50 years - no matter whether they're easy to love or difficult?

1 Corinthians 13 is known as the love chapter, and I think has more answers on how to love than we realize. Okay, maybe it's just me. Or maybe not. As I look around me, observation tells me many others have just as many problems putting biblical love into action as I do. Thus, this series.

As much as I hoped to get to the first "way" of loving a neighbor today, I think we've covered enough. I pray that you will pray for me and with me, as I will for you, as we dive into God's Word and truly open ourselves to what He has to say about love. And surrendering our flesh and it's desires to put those words into action.

So join me again on Monday, for the next post on the first "way" God calls us to love.

(Hint: "Love is patient...")

How do we love others - no matter whether they're in our lives for 5 minutes or 50 years? Click to tweet

How do we love others - no matter whether they're easy to love or difficult? Click to tweet

How to Love Your Neighbor - Part 1

Who's my neighbor?

Welcome to this new series on my blog! I'm so glad you're here and hope you'll take a  moment to say
"hi." This new series is simply inspired by God and some questions I believe He prompted me to ask myself. My brain is always going, and this time I'm actually getting some of these thoughts down on paper (er, computer). I hope they are a blessing to you and draw you closer to the Lord.

Who is my neighbor? And how do I love them? Click to tweet

This question - who is my neighbor - was asked by a lawyer to Jesus. He was trying to justify himself to the Lord. (Notice how this never worked? Wait. Don't we do the same? Gulp. Okay, moving on.)

The man wanted to know who he was supposed to love. He was looking to earn his way into heaven and seemed okay with the greatest commandments of loving God and loving his neighbor. But I'm guessing he felt his neighbor didn't include EVERYONE.

I've always wondered about Jesus' answer to this quesion - who is my neighbor. He tells a story about a man beaten and robbed, who ignored the injured man, and who helped him. Then Jesus asks, "Who do you think proved to be a neighbor?" (paraphrased) It seems like Jesus would have focused on the man that needed help in being the neighbor to love, but instead, he shifts the focus to the Samaritan (who would have been abhored by a Jewish person) - the person doing the loving action.

While the lawyer was trying to find out who he needed to love, Jesus pointed him to the fact that when we love, we become a neighbor. However, another thought struck me as I mulled over this lesson. The neighbor in need of love (the man beaten and robbed) was a stranger. The Samaritan "just happened" to cross paths with him. And chose to take notice of him. Chose to help him. To love him as he loved himself. To love him radically.

To love our neighbor as ourself means to love them radically. But who is our neighbor? Click to tweet

Does that mean we are to love everyone who crosses our paths? Yes.

That means we are to love our spouse - radically.

Love our children - radically.

Love our in-laws - radically.

Love our extended family - radically.

Love our actual neighbors - radically.

Love the grocery store clerk - radically.

Love our pastors - radically.

Love our coworkers - radically.

Love those we go to church with - radically.

Get the picture? I am getting it, and if I'm completely honest, it scares me. Because I know how very far short I fall of this.

I do love the people in my life, but usually in easy ways that don't really cost me anything. I'm not really good at stopping my progress, pausing my agenda, noticing the needy person on the ground and loving them radically. Loving them in a way that costs me. Costs me my comfort. Costs me my schedule. Costs me emotional investment.

I don't do this well. But the goal of this journey, of digging into this question of how to love my neighbor, is to do it better. To get my flesh under submission and surrender to God. To not only think about doing radically loving things, but to actually do them.

Now that we know that everyone who crosses our path in this life is our neighbor, next we will examine what it means to love them radically.

I hope you'll join me on this journey! I look forward to hearing what God reveals to you and works in your life as you pursue Him and living His way.

What does it look like to pursue God and live His way? Click to tweet