Jesus said the commands to not steal, murder, commit adultery, and covet could be combined to say “love your neighbor as yourself.” Paul extrapolates this truth in Romans 13, declaring that love – real love – godly love – does no wrong to others.
If we’re really loving, we’re not doing those things that we know would hurt others. He goes on to say that this real, godly love fulfills the law of God: love your neighbor as yourself.
Does that mean that we’ll never offend someone or hurt their feelings? Only when we stop being human.
NOTE: We will never stop being human.
Abraham Lincoln said, “You can please some of the people some of the time, all of the people some of the time, some of the people all of the time, but you can never please all of the people all of the time.” Simply put, we will, at some point, inadvertently cause someone discomfort and even pain with our words and/or actions.
Love is an intentional act. It is a choice. When we see the guy next door’s yard looking so amazing when ours is dying, we can covet, looking for ways to get some of his yard into our yard, making plans to take some, just off the edges… OR we can walk next door and talk with him and learn how he makes his yard look so beautiful. We choose to build a relationship or hurt someone and Someone (God).
We are married, but feeling the stress of life. Our spouse is feeling that same stress and our relationship is strained, it’s no longer easy, no longer feels fulfilling, so we start talking with that coworker or other person we see regularly. We give intimately of our hearts to that person, soon hurting the one we say we love, and likely destroying the marriage. The choice was to work harder on the covenant relationship or turn toward easy and follow that path.
Love is intentional. We must stop thinking it “just happens.” It doesn’t. We must mean it. This was God’s intent, that we would make the choices to honor Him by loving others the way He does.
Let’s put this into action today, instead of looking for easy love, let’s look for real love, intentional love. Let’s GIVE intentional love. Let’s BE intentional love. When situations come up offering the choice of good and best, let us choose best, because that’s who God is.
Coffee, Bible, Journal.
