Finding the strength to love!
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Loving people is really hard. Trying to love the world around us can feel impossible. Lockdown life has only made it harder to love people. Lockdown has made us self focused and has limited our capacity for life and love.
Even before lockdown it was not easy to love people. The truth is that people hurt us. People reject us. People let us down. And yet we are called to go on loving people.
If we really want to push ourselves, we think about going out onto the streets to love people. Being on the streets can add an extra layer of difficulty in our ability to love people. What if someone from the office walks past? What if a mum from the school gate sees me while I am praying for someone on the street?
Loving people is not easy. In fact, the older I get, the more I realise that loving people is impossible. In my own life, I have come to a place of brokenness, where I now know that loving people in my own strength is impossible. Loving people in my own strength will only lead to weariness, burn out and tiredness.
Before I go any further, I want to explain what I mean by loving people. Loving people is the act of giving yourself in an act of kindness and selfless generosity to a person that does not deserve it. Loving someone could be paying for someones shopping. Loving someone could be making a hot meal because they are ill. Loving someone could be praying for someone who has a need. Loving someone can be simply listening to them and really taking the time to hear and understand.
Loving people is more than an act of love. Loving people is where people feel loved because they walk into an atmosphere of love that comes from a heart of love. When we love people from the heart it shows. People feel the love because it is oozing and overflowing from your heart and not just from your actions.
Why is it important to love people? Why not just tell people that they are sinners in need of a saviour? Why not just get on a microphone and tell people that they need to repent?
I believe that the best way to create a safe space where people open up to the person of Jesus is where people experience the love of God.
In the culture in which we now live, people think through their feelings. When they feel loved, there thinking is shifted and opened up to change. I have often heard people say they now think differently about something because of how they felt through an experience. They felt something and their thinking changed.
We want people to experience the love of God and in response for their heart, mind and soul to open up to Jesus. We want to see people open up to Jesus and his message of freedom from sin and eternal life through his death and resurrection. We want people to turn from putting their trust in themselves and to trust Jesus. We want people to turn from sin and selfishness and turn to following Jesus.
We believe that the love of God is the best setting to speak to people and lead people to turn from their sin and put their trust in Jesus. Loving and leading people to Jesus is our purpose and mission.
So how do we love people, when loving people is impossible?
We have discovered that there is only one way to love people. We have found that the freedom to love people comes from one daily choice. Death. The ability to love people can ONLY come from making a daily choice to DIE. As Paul says: For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God and Jesus tells us that each day we have to die to ourselves and follow him.
We have to daily DIE to living and loving in our own strength. We have to come to a daily place of brokenness, where we know that in our own strength, we have nothing to give.
When we accept that Jesus died on the cross to pay the price for our sin and then he rose again, and when we trust in Jesus and we die to ourselves, then we can receive his forgiveness, his mercy, his grace, his power and his love. We love people by trusting in Jesus and letting his love flow in us and through us to the world around us.
The first thing we read in Joshua Chapter one is that Moses is dead. In Fact, even though Moses is dead, God makes a point of telling Joshua something that Joshua already knows. The verse reads: After the death of Moses the servant of the Lord, the Lord said to Joshua son of Nun, Moses’ aide: “Moses my servant is dead.” It is as if God needed Joshua to fully accept and live in the reality that Moses was dead in order for Joshua to step into something new.
God goes onto tell Joshua 3 times that he has to be bold. For Joshua to be bold he had to first accept that Moses was dead. The old was gone. This was the time for Joshua to lead. To make decisions. To be be brave.
As a follower of Jesus, our old life has gone. We are a new person. Each day we have to accept that our old life is DEAD. This is the key to being bold and being free and living a life of love.
When you accept that you are dead, then you are free from what people think of you. Free from fear. Free from worrying about failure or making mistakes. Free from all the things that would stop you loving people.
You are free to cross over into a new place of living a life of love that leads people to Jesus.
It takes boldness to love people. Inside of you is a lion that roars. The lion of Judah. A name that the Bible uses to describe Jesus. Right now he is roaring with passion. He is roaring with love for the people that live all around you.
Boldness is not about your personality type. Boldness is not about how quiet or loud you are. Boldness is not about whether you are an introvert or extrovert. Boldness is you accepting that you are dead to your old life and that you are alive in Jesus. Boldness is knowing that you are free. Free to love. Free to boldly love. Free to step into new places and spaces and love people with passion. Free to love and lead people to Jesus.
