Loving Your Neighbor

A couple weeks ago, I randomly opened up one of my favorite books, Crazy Love,  and began to dig into the genius words of Francis Chan. And wouldn't ya know that I began reading about what it means to truly love like Jesus. Which, I will confess, has proven to be a tremendous struggle in my walk.

Funny how Jesus has this way of shoving things in our face that we need. . . but honestly do not want to acknowledge. Touche my man.
 

I have learned that Jesus' love is more than just being kind and friendly to others, as well as "doing good." The love of The Lord encapsulates the tough stuff, too. After all, sinners love their friends and sinners love those who do good to them. So how can we differentiate ourselves and truly embody what it looks and feels like to love as The Man who loves like no other?

We all have heard over and over to love thy neighbor blah blah, your enemies, and so on. But I mean, come on. . . who actually does that. Love your enemy? You're joking right? The last thing I want to do to my enemies is love them. Let's get real, when someone does something to hurt me, my initial reaction most of the time is, "What can I do to retaliate?"

We are also called to love and expect nothing in return. This is a trillion times harder to do than to say. A lot of times, humans are conditioned to respond based on rewards and punishments. (Am I bringing back memories of Pysch 101??) Well, if I try to love someone and continually receive nothing in return, and granted sometime get hurt along the way, why on God's green Earth would I continue to love on them?
 In the words of Chan:

 "True faith is loving a person after he has hurt you. True love makes you stand out. . .It is just this sort of love that is crazy to the world: true love, a kind found nowhere but through Christ."
 

To be honest, loving like Jesus sometimes seems impossible. I consider myself a pretty nice person who tries her best to be all inclusive, non judgemental and welcoming. But our society has a way of unintentionally labeling, grouping, and separating ourselves into categories. I don't believe we explicitly do this to put a wedge in between any two groups of people. More so, I believe it helps us make sense of the terribly confusing world we live in. Nevertheless, who is to say that the poor man on the corner selling that dang newspaper is any less deserving of my love than my best friend? The truth is that we all need love and we all want love. The bigger truth is that we all have the capacity to show love to everyone we encounter. It just comes down to a matter of stripping away our own insecurities and trusting The Lord.


As a nation of believers and followers of Christ, it is our responsibility to deliver The Word through our actions. Jesus did not just show love to those who were nice to him. He loved the ones who betrayed, ridiculed, and tortured him. True love means giving to those who cannot and will not return the favor.

Chan touches on this saying:

"People who are Obsessed with Jesus give freely and openly, without censure. Obsessed people love those who hate them and who can never love them back."

As Christians, sometimes we have to do things that frankly, do not make sense.

I suppose my challenge for this week, and every week hereafter, is to stop conditionally loving people. It really isn't an option anymore for me to pick and choose who I love. I knew when I made my decision to start a journey with Jesus there would be some things I encountered that would not come easy. But hey, I guess there could be worse things in life, right?

Is loving your neighbor the secret to life???

 

Summer Fling

The past two months have been pretty darn amazing. I recently just graduated college and am currently in the limbo stages of undergrad to graduate school. I decided that this summer I would just take time off and be free to do whatever I wanted before becoming a full time grad student with no time, money, or brain power left to function. This may have been one of the best decisions I have ever made, second to ordering the whole wheat blueberry pancakes at Fido in Nashville.

I could not wait to get this summer underway. I imagined my friends and I all going out every weekend, living like celebrities, meeting new people, and maybe even having a couple summer flings  before jet setting back to reality when August would roll around. Life never actually happens how we imagine it though.

If you know me at all, you fully understand when I say I have an extremely hard time being quiet. Nevertheless, this summer I endured a lot of unexpected "quiet time." Which is weird for me because I literally could be content talking to a rock. However, there is only so much talking to the wall you can do when all your friends have jobs and you have a deaf dog. So, what did I do? I decided to pick back up a conversation I started with Jesus a long time ago.

I cannot even begin to describe how refreshing this was. Jesus is like one of those friends that you can go for years not talking to, but when you see him or her you can pick right back up where you left off. I absolutely love this about him. I'll be honest, I have a really hard time maintaining a constant balanced relationship with the J-Man. Luckily, I received a piece of advice that helped me rekindle my flame from a good friend at a bible study this summer. She challenged me to start talking to Jesus only when I actually want to not when I feel like I have to. This was awesome. I found myself wanting to spend more time with Him because it was no longer an obligation. I genuinely began to enjoy our time together and our conversations became two sided again. Sounds like an excerpt from a couples therapy session, doesn't it?

Well, maybe, just maybe, we should really start looking at our relationship with Christ this way. We put so much time and effort into perfecting and maintaining our humanly relationships every day. Why don't we do that with Jesus too? It's a question that shouldn't have to be asked. However, so many of us forget to work on the one relationship that trumps all others. The thing that really gets me here is that Jesus literally can't break up with you, he isn't going to stab you in the back and date your best friend, he would never cheat on you, and he sure is not going to be the one to file for divorce. We cannot go wrong with Him. This is a fact. This is the one relationship that, if we want it to, will remain constant for the entirety of our  lives.

It's puzzling to me why I will most likely spend hours and even days worrying and waiting for some jerk loser to text me. Yet, I can call up the most popular guy in the universe and he will answer before the phone even rings. Now, I'm not saying find the closest relationship counselor, knock on her door and start yelling I want to get back together with Jesus. But how about just being quiet and taking (in my case) a summer, or even just a weekend, to spark back up the fire that Jesus once had set in your heart. Jesus just wants you to want Him. And let's get real why would you not want to be in love with the most amazing, all powerful, merciful and just God that is and was and ever will be???

I guess what I am trying to say is my summer did not go totally like I had imagined. I did not go out every weekend, I felt nothing like a celebrity and it turns out I'm not leaving my summer fling when I go back to school. I'm taking Him with me and I could not be more excited!

So, could my summer vacation be the secret to life? hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm