Love is more than a simple act. Love is more than being kind and tolerant. Love is at the core of who we should be as children of God. It should be that quality that brings substance to the way we live and deal with others.
And sharing love is likely to take us to uncomfortable places. We may need to do things in a new way. We may need to show love in places we are not familiar with and to people we may not like.
So, we can ask ourselves if we have what it takes to be a person who loves. And in the asking we have those doubts. Maybe love is too difficult for us to live out.
When we have our doubts about where we might be heading in living out love we must look to the people who were blessed by God to do the difficult things. Jesus was chosen by God to preach the good news of salvation, to free those who were prisoners of sin, to give sight to the spiritually blind (Luke 4:18). And he was going to do that with Jew and Gentile alike.
This made the people who knew him very angry. But Jesus walked on in his ministry. He went ahead and shared love.
The prophet Jeremiah was chosen by God to do wonderful things. And this frightened Jeremiah. But what assurance did God give the prophet? What has God done?
Can we be like Jeremiah too sometimes? When we hear the message that we as Christians are supposed to love our neighbor as ourselves, and we are not just to embrace the idea but live out the words, do we sometimes feel upset? Do we get angry that so much is expected of us? Does it bother us to know that people we consider to be sinners are supposed to receive love from us?
And with all this emotion we might be like Jeremiah and try to avoid the obligation of sharing love. We might say “I don’t know how to do this. I am only a child.” (see Jeremiah 1:6)
We must remember that God knows what He is doing. God created us. He knew us before we were born. And as believers in God, as Christians, as children of the Lord, we are set apart from others. We are special.
God appoints us to be the people who share His love with those who do not know love. We are the ones who must move ahead in a ministry of sharing love.
DAILY CHALLENGE: Who is someone who needs to know God’s love?
