Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity,
I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. 1 Corinthians 13:1
Have you ever not been loving and realized later you were not who you wanted to be?
Or more important than that that you were not who God wanted you to be?
Your love turned a little cold.
Maybe for good reason.
In spite of people’s failings, God wants us to love.
Without love, what good is a Christian?
It is God’s love that draws people to Him, for He is love.
It is God’s love that helps us to see clearly.
It is God’s love that allows us to humbly look at a person or situation and He then can give us what we are lacking in love.
None of us can love those we want to hate on our own.
It is a struggle to even be cordial to those who have wronged us.
Not forgiving from the bottom of our hearts is a sin we have all been guilty of.
No matter how nice the follower of Christ is, without that love from God’s own heart, we cannot share His love.
It is not from us.
We cannot generate it, we cannot garner it up, we cannot gather love with all our good intentions.
We have to let God put His love in our heart.
If we reject it or justify why we don’t want to love,
that reasoning is not going to fly when we meet Jesus face to face.
I hated my mother.
I had all sorts of reasons why.
You might have even agreed with my rationale.
If I was going to walk with Jesus, that hate could not be a part of me.
I prayed and I prayed, but it surely wasn’t as important to me as it was to God.
I just felt how I felt.
You can’t help how you feel, right?
No, but you can commit those feelings to God,
especially when He has shown you in His word that they are evil and offensive to Him.
So one day I was praying with my friend about this hate.
I wanted it gone.
I went into the bathroom and threw up.
I remember it was a putrid color of green, like a muddy lake green, very ugly.
I was surprised.
But then again, I wasn’t surprised.
I felt like the hate was finally gone.
I am certain many times I have been a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.
Loving those who are hard for me to love is difficult.
I don’t love everyone like Jesus would like me to.
I don’t know if I’ll ever make it.
Most of us are not there.
We are not like Stephen, who when being stoned to death prayed for his murderers.
And he kneeled down, and cried with a loud voice, Lord, lay not this sin to their charge.
And when he had said this, he fell asleep. Acts 7:60
We try to be kind to someone who said something we didn’t like or did something we didn’t like.
To move over and let Jesus use us to love our foes is not an easy task.
Submitting to Christ and trusting Him is not simple when we are used to doing things our own way.
Letting Christ Jesus change us to be more like Him takes effort.
It takes humility.
It takes resolve.
And be renewed in the spirit of your mind;
And that ye put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness.
Ephesians 4:23-24