I've been having a lot of conversations about the way we should treat people the past few days. There are people who are different from us and no matter what, we may never understand them. Some people annoy me and I don't know how to treat people who annoy me. I know I should love them, but loving people doesn't mean treating them nicely when in your heart, you don't feel that way. I need to be transformed from the inside.
"Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us." - 1 John 4:7-12
The one thing that stuck out in today's sermon was how spiritual maturity is not how much you know, but how much you love. I think a lot of people think the former. We worry about how to sound wise when we talk about faith or how to pray with eloquence. But that's not what it's about. God tells us the second greatest commandment is to love our neighbors as ourselves. But in order to do so, we'd have to know God (1 John 4:8). Without knowing who God is, we cannot know what love is and when we don't know what love is, how can we love others?
I want to know God more so that I can better love others. I feel like I'm back on square one again.
nice definition
ReplyDeleteThanks for posting about this, Amanda. :) I've been thinking about this lately and the same thing stood out to me about the sermon. When I hear "Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love," it's a wake up call to me. Basically realizing that all these things that seem so important in the present are not, unless they have something to do with loving God or loving others. But, usually, these "important" things have to do with loving myself. It makes me realize, "What the heck am I doing?? Why am I wasting so much time on trivial things?" But it is a good reminder and one that God uses (and is using!) to teach me to keep pursuing Him...it makes Christianity so much simpler too. Thanks for the reminder and encouraging/convicting post!
ReplyDeleteAmanda...
ReplyDeleteThank you for posting this.
"I need to be transformed from the inside."
"spiritual maturity is not how much you know, but how much you love."
Your words remind me a lot...
or more precisely God's...:)