The now aged cartoon by Charles Shultz pictured Charlie Brown's dog Snoopy lying on top of his famous dog house. As he was pondering the caption in a cloud over his head read, “I love the world. It's just people I hate.” Some of us feel like that sometimes. The world, it seems, would be such a wonderful place if there wasn't all these people around. However, people are around, and these people are prone to make mistakes, be wrong, have errors and sometimes are downright mean. This leads us to one of the most challenging verses that the apostle John has presented to us yet. In First John chapter three and verse eleven he wrote:
For this is the message that ye heard from the beginning, that we should love one another.
Isn't it oh so true that as long as people do as we think and wish they would do they are easy to love, but the moment they do something different, challenging or opposing to our point of view they become less lovable? Therein lies the challenge. Can we love people who are not like us, have different values than us, see things and do things differently than us? The message John gives us is “we should”. The truth is that the things that we have in common with others make us appreciated and loved, and the things that we do not have in common with others, don't make us so appreciated and loved. John knew this, and yet he gives us the second of the two commandments that Jesus said “On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” The first one is to love God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength, but the second one is the one John emphasizes in this scripture.
Loving God and loving people sums up the whole law. If we love God we will desire to keep His commandments and do works of righteousness toward Him. If we love people, we will desire to nothing that will harm them intentionally and will place their welfare above our own. This is the challenge, and without the Holy Spirit of God helping and leading us, we will never be able to keep this command.
This message from John should have us all convicted today, and if there is any area of need in our love life, we should go before the Lord God Almighty and ask His help to keep His word.
Next time we will study an example of a person who did not keep the commandment to love his brother, so read ahead and we shall share together then.
Until tomorrow...there is more...
Look for the new devotional book “Equipped for Battle – From Generation to Generation” in all major bookstore sites, www.amazon.com ; www.barnesandnobles.com ; download to e-books, and find it locally at www.mrzlc.com/bookstore
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