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???