Love them by yielding

when it comes to yielding to the Lord, there is no question.

He is God; we are not. The chain of command is clear.

But when it comes to yielding to others… things get a bit difficult.

As humans, the act of lowering ourselves before another can leave us feeling small, or less important.  It can take our pride out with one swing.  It almost always leaves us bitter.  This is not what God planned for, however.

Being children of God we are all on an equal field.  We are all sinners, desperately needing Grace, and so we are all just the right amount of broken to feel a void.  Instead of being competitive with our energy, we should be giving and compassionate, no matter the circumstances.  Though we cannot fill the void ourselves, we can push one another along towards the One who can.

The Lord loves us with a love that we cannot even begin to fathom.  His hand works in our lives, driven by that love, and how often do we say that we don’t understand a bit of what He is up to?  These details are meant to remain unknown because it just isn’t our time to understand all that He is doing with us.  And so, when He asks us to love our brothers and sisters, it is meant to be confusing for the same reason.  We are to walk by faith and be obedient to His commands.

Because we are an inquisitive species, we ask for an explanation

and we canturn to 1 John 4:11 for an answer;

a scripture which instructs us in the most simple terms…

“Dear Friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.”

Simply put; because He loves us, we are to love the “us” that we are part of.  Our family, friends, neighbors, co-workers, strangers, enemies, etc.  Everyone.  And if that person is not returning the love, we do not withdraw our own, but look to the Source to be filled.  As it is now, the world loves when it is easy and when the return is grand.  God wants us to love because He has an eternity waiting for us, and humility is a very small price to pay for the work done on the cross.

Remember..

while we all sinned, He died for us.  He loved us when it was most difficult.  (Romans 5:8 NIV)

Only when we draw on the love we receive from our Heavenly Father can we love one another to the fullest.  It is an emotion that is meant to be an overflow from the heart, not voluntarily conjured up at our convenience.  Trying to follow His commands with a human logic is going to be uncomfortable because we are meant to follow them with a full heart, full of the power His Spirit gives us.

In this month of love, I challenge you to understand why we, as Christian women, love those around us.  I encourage you to love through the worst of times and find a healing in knowing that you can have some bit of peace and safety in the most challenging and painful moments of life.  I urge you to seek this scripture and store it up in your heart, and pray for God to reveal it to you through action.  Train yourself to love others, no matter what, simply because He loves us.

© 2013, Kristin Cho. All rights reserved. Love it? Print, email, pin, tweet or share but please don’t use my work without permission. {Copyright Fancy Little Things. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this article or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.}