A Strong Calling

Have you ever come across those "hard to love people"? There can be tons of reasons as to why a person is hard to love. It can be as extreme as someone is being very cruel towards you and constantly acting in anger. Maybe it's someone who is in authority over you, continuing to make your life difficult just because they can.  It can be as simple as someone with an opposite personality than you.  We are all faced with the challenge to love people. I have found in my life that the times I have struggled to

love other people is usually a time when God was trying to reveal to me an area I needed to grow in. The issue would quickly go from seeing how someone is hard to love (based on a superficial reason) to seeing that the reason I couldn't love that person was because of my pride or selfishness. It also could have been my lack of acceptance and care. 

The times I have been blessed enough to realize God was up to something, I realized that I was trying to muster up the love on my own.  I was trying to love people by my own strength instead of allowing the love of God to flow freely from me. 1 John spells this out a little for us.

"Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us."(1 John 4:7-12 NIV)

We love out of a response to what God has done for us by sending His one and only son to die for our sins. God freely gave His love to us, there is nothing that we have done to deserve this love and there is nothing that we could ever do to make God love us any more or any less.  Romans says, "While we were STILL sinners Christ died for us." You see when we come to fully understand the love God has for us, how can we even think that we have the right to decide who we show love to or not? The love that God has for us transforms our hearts towards other people, it has to!  A little bit later in chapter 4 of 1 John it says,

 "And so we know and rely on the love God has for us.  God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them. This is how love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment: In this world we are like Jesus."  (1 John 4:16-18 NIV)

This is a tall order to live like Jesus did but the bottom line is that this is our calling. In scripture we never see Jesus repaying evil for evil. We never see Him talking wrongly against the people that persecuted Him. Even as he was hanging on the cross suffering he was asking for the forgiveness of those that were persecuting him. He is in the business of loving people. One of my favorite stories in the bible is the one about the woman at the well.

Jesus and His disciples were on their way to Galilee and scripture says they had to go through Samaria. Geographically going through Samaria to get to Galilee was the shortest route to take but one that Jews never took. You see Jews had such hatred for the Samaritans that they looked at them as the outcasts, the despised. A Jew that had any contact with a Samaritan was viewed as unclean. It was very uncommon for Jews to go through the Samaria so when John said that “he had to go through Samaria” the necessity in going was not for geographical reasons but for the purpose of saving the lost.

There was a woman who had to go to the well in the scorching heat of the day in order to avoid people. Because she was a known prostitute she was looked down upon, people would judge her, and ridicule her. Most women during this time would take the long trek to the well for more water during the cool of the night while in community together. Jesus went against what culture said and went out of his way to find this woman. Jesus was living in such submission to God that he was aware of the divine appointments that were before Him. It didn't matter to him that his disciples thought he was crazy or that people would wonder why he was at the well with this woman alone. Jesus saw it as a chance to love someone that was an outcast in society, someone who was judged for the way they lived their life. The love of God was clearly being lived out in Jesus' life.  It was evident that he lived in such a way that love and compassion flowed freely from him, and remember that 1 John 4:17 said, "in this world we are to be like Jesus".  

As you encounter those "hard to love people" this week there are two things you can be thinking about. You can ask God if he is trying to reveal to you an area that you need to change in your own life in how you love others. You can also look at every encounter you have with someone as a God ordained appointment just like Jesus' appointment at the well. Cling to the cross for your strength and allow the love God has for you to flow freely from you as you love those around you like Jesus would.