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more on loving others


John 13:34  NASB
A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another.

One of the toughest things that we have to do is to love.  One of the sweetest and best things we will ever do is to love, but our world and most of the people around us believe love is something it is not.  Jesus is the epitome of love.  Not everyone will say that, but many people and for generations will assert that Jesus taught us to do just that.

Last week I heard something that stopped me in my tracks.  It has to do with serving others, and it you really know me you know that my calling is to serve and to lead others to serve in the name of Jesus. 

Here is that quote: Our goal is to minister to those who want it and love those who don't - David Martin

Serving is loving, but to love others is not always each.  Loving people who do not want what we are offering or don’t even want to be near us is tough.  Often times it is easier to stay by ourselves and not to love or serve, but we just cannot do that.  We must love.  We must serve.

I’d like to share some of the thoughts that inspire me to keep on loving, to keep on serving.  Some of the following I heard years ago while others are new or fresh.  But when I read them, think through them and see to employ them, I find myself propelled to love more.  The more we serve and love the more people will encounter our God who has loved and served us.

God's definition of what matters is pretty straightforward. He measures our lives by how we love.  - Francis Chan, Crazy Love: Overwhelmed by a Relentless God

Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into friend. - Martin Luther King, Jr.

Intense love does not measure, it just gives. - Mother Teresa

Nothing can bring a real sense of security into the home except true love. - Billy Graham

To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable. - C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

If this is going to be a Christian nation that doesn't help the poor, either we have to pretend that Jesus was just as selfish as we are, or we've got to acknowledge that He commanded us to love the poor and serve the needy without condition and then admit that we just don't want to do it. - Stephen Colbert

If you judge people, you have no time to love them. - Mother Teresa

But God doesn't call us to be comfortable. He calls us to trust Him so completely that we are unafraid to put ourselves in situations where we will be in trouble if He doesn't come through. - Francis Chan, Crazy Love: Overwhelmed by a Relentless God

May we be caught loving others in creative ways that stick.  Real love, authentic love leads others to change.  That love changes us too.

1 John 4:12  NASB
No one has seen God at any time; if we love one another, God abides in us, and His love is perfected in us.

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