We can look at a person and think that we cannot love "someone like that". Perhaps deep inside, we think of certain others being or not being "worthy" of our love. We place conditions on our love wondering what we will get in return. Who is worthy? Am I worthy? Are you worthy? The funny thing is, that if we are thinking that about someone else, odds are someone is thinking the same thing about us.
Remember, we are told to love because He first loved us. We know that Jesus loves you and me and He showed us how love works. In 1 John 3:16-17 NLT "We know what real love is because Jesus gave up His life for us. So we also ought to give up our lives for our brothers and sisters". Then follows verse 18, "Dear children, let's not merely say that we love each other; let us show the truth by our actions".
No where does scripture mention that Jesus evaluated people to see who was worthy of His love. No where does it imply He loved us with expectations of what He would get back. In fact, I believe that the greater the love, the fewer the expectations. Loving completely, giving ourselves away in love to the fullest we can would be to love without expecting something back. We would not expect certain behaviors or considerations, we would simply love. How pure is that?
If we feel we have the right to qualify our love, then everyone else should have that same right. If that was the case, would any one of us escape someone thinking we were not worthy of being loved? If our Savior, Jesus Christ loved by choosing who was worthy and who was not, I imagine, we all would spend our lives being unloved by Him.
If we want to love, be loved and feel love in our lives, we need to give our love away. God lives in us and His love is in us. If we love one another, that love is shown to the world and is the full expression of God's love. If we don't love each other, what does that do to how God's love gets displayed and shared?
Recently, my brother-in-law's father passed away. We watched for several years as his health declined. He eventually had a stroke removing any ability for him to communicate and eventually even move. However, his three children dedicated themselves to caring for him. They knew their father would not enjoy living in a nursing home and that such a life would make him miserable. They loved their father and wanted to do the best they could for him. All of that came with a price because he could not be left alone. They spent years each taking certain days to be his companion and care giver. Day after day, week after week, month after month and year after year they gave their time away. They gave up holidays, weekends and even vacations to be at his side and help him with daily life. They would sit in a room and watch television with him and get no conversation, they were simply together. They would sit with him and read to him with no discussion of the material read, they were simply together. Their sacrifice was enormous and was matched by their great love and devotion to their father. They loved knowing that they would be getting nothing in return. He could not even speak to say thank you. They loved and they gave years of their lives away because of that love. I will tell you it was an amazing thing to watch and one of the greatest expressions of love I have seen.
Was he worthy of their love? I don't imagine they ever even thought about that. Were they going to get anything in return? No, but I don't think they ever thought about that either.
He was their dad, helpless and completely dependent on them and they gave all they had out of their love for him. That is pure love. That is how the Lord calls us to love.
Since Jesus has touched my heart regarding loving others, I see so much in a different way. My life is changing and being transformed. I feel that to live is to love, and to love is to live. What is a life without loving? What is a life without being loved? Are either really life at all?
I wanted to be successful as so many around me. I accumulated things and stuff but those things were always replaced with newer things. Things grew old and dated as fast as I could bring them home. Now immersed in the study of loving with God, things are so different. Loving my family and friends never grows old. Loving strangers is exciting and fun. The entire world has become a place of blessing. Love doesn't rust or fade or get out of fashion. In fact, if you want to give the greatest gift ever, give love. It is always the right color, always the right size, always the right style and never becomes unfashionable. Love is the one gift, that if it is returned or given to someone else, you won't be insulted.
The Beatles penned a song many years ago stating "all we need is love" and that is so true. Permit me to pose a sequel to that song. I title it "All we need is to love". If we all love then we all get loved and don't have to spend our time on watching out to see if someone is loving us. We can simply focus of loving others confident that love will find us.
We just have to get to of our own way. Jesus gives us His love freely and we are to copy His example. Giving love away is the best feeling ever, it changes who we are in ways unimaginable. How often have we wondered or searched for God's will for our lives? Well, scripture is clear that we are to love God and love others. If you want to live in the will of God, love Him and love those around you.
Sometimes I think about how we are so divided. We are all human, we all live on the same planet, agreed? Evil has us feeling a competetiveness, even a pregidous. Evil has broken apart the human race into competing segments. Someone is from the United States and someone else is from Russia! Isn't there an automatic feeling that one should not like the other? Should we feel we are in competition? We are divided by continents and by countries. Even here is the United States we are divided. We are pitted against each other by state, city, town and even neighborhood. Surely all of us in the same neighborhood can get along and love each other. Sadly, that is more difficult than we might think. Even living in the same neighborhood we are divided, by the type of house we live in, what school we go to, what kind of car we drive and I have not even gotten to disabilities, race or religion. By the time we get done with all the qualities making someone worthy of our love, who is left? In all truth, most likely, the only one we can love based on all the parameters of worth and acceptable qualities, would be ourselves. If we consider such things, might we conclude, we are really not a very loving species?
I go back to the start of this blog, we have gotten in the way of loving as we are instructed to love. We are in the way of loving as Jesus loves us. We are to love because He first loved us, but we have got to get out of our own way to accomplish that.
We have read that we need to die to ourselves. Regarding loving, we have to set a side all our judgements and prejudices and just love. Getting rid of those things is dying to our wrong beliefs and ideas. We learn in Scripture that for Christ to increase in our lives, we need to decrease. That lesson follows the same thought process. For us to share the love of God with those around us, we will need to disregard all our selfish wants and desires. We will have to stop putting ourselves first.
It is simple, get out of the way and just love somebody. Everybody.