Love Your Neighbor
1John 2:9-11 Anyone who claims to be in the light but hates his brother is still in the dark. But anyone who loves his brother is living in the light and need not be afraid of stumbling; unlike the man who hates his brother and is in the darkness, not knowing where he is going, because it is to dark to see. 1John 4:20,21 Anyone who says, ‘ I love God,’ and hates his brother, is a liar, since a man who does not love the brother that he can see cannot love God, whom he has never seen. So this is the commandment He has given us, that anyone who loves God must also love his brother. Wouldn’t it be a beautiful world if everyone loved each other? Well, that’s the kind of world God has planned for those who can love each other. The question is, will you be apart of it?
It takes alot of patience to love your neighbor. ‘ Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.’ It’s not about just loving people you know, it’s about loving everyone equally. We meet people every day that we have never seen before, it could be at the store, work, driving or on t.v. We don’t have to physically meet them to judge them. We are quick to judge just by the way they drive, perform at work, how they dress, talk, walk, eat, look or any of the things they do. We do have to remember that no two people are alike. God created us all and it’s not the things people say and do that we have to love, but it’s the fact that God loves them as He loves you. So if we expect to receive God’s love, then we need to love God and His creation.
Just because someone doesn’t like you doesn’t mean you have to hate them back. Love will conquer your enemy. We need to show people that no matter what they do to us, we still love them. Trust God, He’ll take care of them in one way or the other. Luke 17:1-3 He said to His disciples,’Obstacles are sure to come, but alas for the one who provides them! It would be better for him to be thrown into the sea with a millstone put round his neck than that he should lead astray one of these little ones.
Watch yourselves! Not only do you have to watch out for them, but also don’t provide an obstacle for your brother. If we choose to love our enemy and not expect anything in return, then we will be loving God. By praying for the enemy and not stooping to their level, we will be following Jesus Christ. Jesus said in John 13: 34, 35 ‘ I give you a new commandment: love one another; just as I have loved you, you also must love one another. By this love you have for one another, everyone will know that you are one of my disciples.’ So how can one say that they follow Jesus but at the same time hate their neighbor?
This is where we bring God into contempt and use His name in vain. In order to love God and our neighbor, we need to acquire virtues. John 15:8 ‘ It is to the glory of my Father that you should bear much fruit, and then you will be my disciples. Good fruit: read Galatians 5:22, Bad fruit: read Galatians 5:19-21. Humility and pride are enemies. They are completely opposite. Pride is all about self and the one thing that destroys pride is humility. Luke 3:9 ‘ Yes, even now the axe is laid to the roots of the trees, so that any tree which fails to produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown on the fire.’ We are the trees and the roots are pride. From pride all sin is born.
Humility is when one doesn’t think about pleasing one’s self. It cares more about pleasing God, so that one can truely love God and our neighbors. If you can love God with all your mind, soul, heart and strength, then you will also be able to love your neighbors. Once you acquire this unspeakable love from God, you won’t even see the evil in your neighbor, you will only have compassion for them. You will feel for them just as Jesus did when He was on the cross,’ Father forgive them for they know not what they do.’ Also Luke 17:4 ‘ If your brother does something wrong, reprove him and, if he is sorry, forgive him. And if he wrongs you seven times a day and seven times comes back to you and says,” I am sorry”, you must forgive him’.
Remember not to judge others or you will be judged for your sins(evil and wickedness). You cannot judge one sin to be greater than another. The reason I am saying this is because we have a mind that will deceive us. It will tell us,’ Hey, that’s not all that bad’. We cannot think like this. In God’s eyes, love is love and hate is hate. Any wrong doing to your neighbor is hate, plain and simple. We have such a big vocabulary of words that mean the same thing. We did this to make harsh sounding words sound softer, like being “unkind”. That doesn’t sound as bad as “hate”, does it?
Instead of saying to someone, ” Why do you talk bad about that person?” Why don’t you just say, ” Why do you hate that person?” And usually their response will be, ” I don’t hate them.” So, the next time someone does or says something to you that’s hateful (and all bad things done to us can become hateful) pray for them, turn the situation around to a positive. Don’t let it bother you, because if you do, your pride is working and it will harm your soul. Read Revelations 21:8. It is God you must worship, not yourself. When you injure a neighbor with hate, you injure God and when you injure God, you injure your soul. When you injure God, you hate God, and those that hate God love death.
Proverbs11:2 Pride comes first, disgrace comes after; with the humble is wisdom found.
Proverbs 13:10 Whosoever speak ill of anything, bind himself for the time to come: but he that fear the commandment, shall dwell in peace.
Proverbs 14:3 In the mouth of the fool is the rod of pride: but the lips of the wise preserve them.
Proverbs 29:23 A man’s pride brings him humiliation, he who humbles himself will bring honor.
Daily Evaluation
We Need To Evaluate Ourselves Daily
Now that we have made amends, it’s time to keep from doing the same things that we had to make amends for over again. We can do this by overcoming our pride. It begins by the way we think and how we bring into ourselves the actions of others. I suppose you could say that if we were alone, we wouldn’t be affected by other people and we, ourselves, wouldn’t be able to affect others by our actions. You could do this if you choose to be a hermit, but many of us don’t have that choice. And even if we did, how could we ever overcome our flesh and learn to love our brothers and sisters in the way God wants us to?
We need to on a daily basis, evaluate ourselves. Look at the things that happened during the day and see how we handled them. Did we handle things in a mature and spiritual way or did we lose? If we did lose, then we need to see why and correct it. We need to fight the good fight, like Paul says. When we are wrong we need to admit it, no more excuses.
Things are going to continue to attack and hurt our pride as long as we allow it. This is why we need to overcome the things that bother us, because they’re going to continue to attack us until we do. Before, it was easy, we weren’t working for righteousness, but now that we are, we are at war, not only with our flesh but the powers of darkness as well. If we continue to win the battles, the things that used to bother us seem like nothing more than a mosquito bite, instead of an all day affair in our mind.
We need to correct ourselves and change the way we think about the things that disrupt our emotions and our souls. We need to see things, all things as positive and if we do, they will turn out to be just that. Sometimes we will see it immediately, sometimes not at all. We have to be positive, this is a part of our faith in God. We need to see the darkness that is in us and work towards purifying ourselves on a daily basis.
Be considerate of others. Don’t constantly think about yourself, think about others. If we practice the good fruits (Galatians 5:22), and develop them and make them a part of our daily lives, we will find that there will be no bad fruits (Galatians 5:19 – 21) growing in our tree. So keep an eye on yourself and ask Jesus to show you the way to overcoming, because you want to do God’s will.
God Bless You
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