What Love means!

“You’re familiar with the old written law, ‘Love your friend,’ and its unwritten companion, ‘Hate your enemy.’ I’m challenging that. I’m telling you to love your enemies. Let them bring out the best in you, not the worst. When someone gives you a hard time, respond with the energies of prayer, for then you are working out of your true selves, your God-created selves. Matthew 5:43‭-‬44a MSG

We must be careful about the pressures of this age we live in, and how it seeks to conform us to its ways. It is fashion to love people who love you in return and it is natural to avoid someone who is viewed as an enemy. This is the problem: whose opinion counts: is it the world, with its inconsistencies and uncertainties, or the Word of God, who challenges us to a higher, nobler standard?

The world understands sowing and reaping, just as it applies under the Word. The world calls me to respond only to all who love me, the Word asks me to be the first to reach out to all men, irrespective of their reaction or response to me. The world makes it a norm to hate the enemy, without defining who the enemy is, while the Word defines the only enemy I have as the devil. If this was impossible, God won't command it, and as we know, Jesus lived out the truth of this instruction in his every day life. He had traitors like Judas Iscariot following him daily, yet he was sent out with the 72 to preach, with miracles following. He was the one who betrayed Jesus, yet I get the feeling that if he had truly repented, he would have been forgiven. Saul of Tarsus got a measure of that love, and we are beneficiaries of the love of God in his life through the letters he wrote in the new testament.

You have no idea what your actions today will birth. You have no idea what the consequences of your actions today will be. Remember, how you react speaks to your ownership and allegiance. If I truly belong to God, I will act like he does, and love as he does. If I don't, then I can make all the noise and keep up the pretence; the fruits of my life will eventually reveal my priorities. Even when all I get from the other person is negativity, all I can do is act right. I cannot control the other man's reactions; I must make sure that the love of God i have received shines through me to bless someone else. His time of favour is here.