It’s that time of year when love is the focus. Of course, I always wait too long to get holiday goodies for my family, so while I ended up having to put Valentine’s candy in my kid’s stockings, I’m sure I will wind up having to give them Cadbury Easter Eggs for Valentine’s Day! Good grief Walmart has me confused about what holiday we’re currently celebrating!

Along with that confusion, I wonder if we also ever become confused about how we should be loving well. I know that sometimes I really miss the mark, and loving the way God calls me to becomes muddled and murky, and difficult. I wonder if it does for you as well.

The thing is that I truly do love people – they fill and energize me. I love meeting new people and reconnecting with old friends. I enjoy visiting and getting to know others, hearing their stories about their families and various backgrounds, what kind of things make them tick and what they’re passionate about, or what struggles and challenges they have faced over the years. I’m a lot like my mom, who we used to say could make a lifelong friend at a rest-stop bathroom! 

However, if I’m completely honest, there are also many days when I would prefer to just stay on the ranch with my cows and chickens over going into town and being around people! You see, I am that complex combination of being an extroverted introvert! People both fill my cup to overflowing – also completely drain it, energize, and exhaust me. 

I share all of that to tell you that I’m not coming from a place of having this loving well principle all figured out. This is something that God and I have wrestled about often over the years.  I’m certainly no expert on the topic; I’m learning to love well in the trenches as a student and disciple of Jesus. And sometimes the lessons are really hard and uncomfortable. They prick, and they poke as the World loudly shouts at me about how I should be loving, who I should or should not be loving. It can be difficult to stand steadfast in God’s biblical command to love when it would be so easy to do what culture tells me to do instead of looking to what God’s Word says about loving other people. 

Why do we struggle to love people well?

We all probably find it easy to love people until they:

rub us the wrong way,

prick, poke, and offend us, 

hurt or embarrass us,

disappoint, lie or manipulate, 

don’t meet our expectations,

irritate or inconvenience us, 

don’t love us in the same way or with the same regard as we love them, 

disagree and argue about our deep biblical beliefs and moral convictions. 

Or:

whine and argue about doing chores, leave their shoes in the middle of the living room floor, don’t hang up their wet towels, come to dinner late, and roll their eyes at us. (I’m the mom of a teenage boy – sometimes loving well is a daily struggle!)

All of these can make it such a challenge to love well because, let’s face it, it is enjoyable and fulfilling to love those who are easy to love! It is a natural response for us to pour into and show affection and kindness to others when they are affectionate, kind, and lovable back to us. It’s easy to love our spouses when they’re tender with us, our children when they behave, the clerk at the grocery store when she is cheerful, the teenager in the school parking lot who gives us the right of way, and the old guy in the doctor’s office who smiles and has a nice conversation with us. It’s easy to love the easy-to-love! This is when our cups are filled, and we are energized by loving others well.

But what about when it comes to those who are difficult and messy, the ones that drain and make us uncomfortable? I think the temptation, then, is to follow the easier path of avoiding them at all costs and just sticking to the barn and the corrals! It is a lot more enjoyable to surround ourselves with those who are easy to love and pour that love back into our lives. 

But I have to ask myself, “Am I actually the one that is sometimes difficult to love? Does my tendency to be nagging, prickly, difficult, and contentious make others want to avoid me?” Since the answer to that is “YES!!” I then have to ask myself the question, “How do I want others to love me well?”. The answer to that is, I want others to love me the way Jesus does. 

Why are we called to love others well?:

Two verses sum up why we are called to love one another, whether it’s easy or difficult, pretty well.

The first one comes from Jesus’ command in John 13:34, “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

And the second is found in Matthew 5:43-46, “You have heard that is was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy,’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have?”

Love gives us the distinguishing mark of Jesus and characterizes us as His followers. Loving others sometimes costs us something that we won’t receive back. There are times when loving won’t result in any kind of reward or benefit. But that is precisely how Jesus has loved us! 

The key to the biblical command is to love the way Jesus loves, with no regard to how “lovable” or “deserving” the other person is and no thought as to whether or not they will love us in return. It’s a love that has a foundation built on the care and concern for the eternal well-being of another. This is Jesus’ love in action.

Loving this way becomes much less difficult when we realize that we can’t produce it on our own. We need the working of the Holy Spirit in our lives to produce the fruit of love. This then becomes a love that not only has the power to bring unbelievers to a saving knowledge of Christ, but also a love that encourages, equips, and strengthens other believers in a world that is often harsh and hostile to us. 

When we’re led by our flesh and not by the Spirit, our love often results in fleshly tendencies that have conditions attached to it.

I will love you well, but only if you:

• Love me back and show me kindness       
• Meet all my expectations
• Don’t irritate, hurt or offend me
• Agree with everything I say and have the same beliefs and convictions as I have 

The World will tell us only to love when it’s to our benefit and when we are loved in return. But Jesus’ currency is completely opposite from this. He tells us to love and to give until we are emptied…because HE is the one who will refill our tanks. He calls us to love regardless of how we are loved in return. He commands us to love and pray for our enemies, to do good, and not expect anything in return. He tells us to love others even when we disagree about contentious subjects. He shows us how to love whether we feel like others “deserve” our love or not. To love even when we don’t feel very loving.

And by doing this, we overcome evil with good and show others that Jesus is the Lord of our lives. When we rely on the Holy Spirit to help us love the difficult and unloveable, we can show love even when we don’t feel love! We act and respond in love and pour it out even when we don’t feel like it. 

We don’t have to worry about being emotionally or physically depleted because it’s Jesus who will pour love back into our lives time and time again. That’s the kind of currency He works in!

This kind of love should rule the life of a Christian; it’s a love with no expectations other than to show a hurting and lost world the hope of Jesus. It’s a grace-filled, gospel-centered kind of love that has the power to redeem lives, heal relationships, protect our families, strengthen our churches, and change the culture around us if we’re willing to tap into it!

God will give us endless opportunities to show this kind of love because difficult people and situations when it’s hard to love are everywhere, and we will encounter them our entire lives. So, while the easy thing to do would be to cut ties with those who are hard to love, we need to remember that God doesn’t call us to what is easy is comfortable, but He is often best glorified when we do what is hard and uncomfortable. 

So what is the truth about love?

The type of love that our culture often encourages and portrays is vastly different from the selfless and sacrificial “agape” love that Jesus exemplified and talks about in the Bible. All we have to do is look on Social Media to get an idea of some of the mindsets and opinions toward caring for and loving difficult people. 

My recently published guided journal, The Truth Journal, helps recognize when our thought life is being trapped up and in a cycle of lies that the Enemy wants us to believe vs what is actually true and, more importantly, what God’s Word says is true. The idea for the journal is based on the fact that truth really does matter! And I believe that when it comes to looking at how Jesus calls us to love even when it’s hard, looking to the truth in His Word is transforming. 

Here are some examples of love according to Social Media posts and memes:

1. The Lie:  “There’s nothing wrong with putting yourself first, it’s called self-love. When you love yourself, you have an overall positive view of yourself and you understand your own value and treat yourself in a loving way.”

The Truth:  “Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interest of others.” Philippians 2:3-4

And

“Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. 1 Corinthians 13:4-6

What this means: There will always be the temptation to respond to things in our lives with a spirit of self-ambition, self-interest, and self-preservation. But living in this spirit of self will always lead to a vain and empty life and falls short of the standard that Christ has set. Loving others requires humility and a conscious effort to put their interests firs. . When we focus on seeing others as more significant than we are, we will experience and share this rare and radical kind of love that Jesus exemplifies and calls us to. This kind of love will soften hearts and change lives.

While God does want us to recognize our value and worth, that value has nothing to do with ourselves! It is an inherent value He places on us because of His own worth and His love for us….not because there is anything necessarily lovable about ourselves. And as much as we hear that self-love is not natural, I would disagree with that. I think loving ourselves and protecting ourselves is our natural default. Scripture never commands us to love ourselves because it is written with the assumption that we are already instinctively doing so. 

1. The Lie: “Protect your space and circle. Invest in people who you know will feed you just as much goodness as you do them.”

The Truth: “Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with one another. Do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly….Repay no one evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all.” Romans 12:14

And

“But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, for he is kind to the ungrateful and the evil.” Luke 6:35

What this means: If we look to God to do the protecting of our space, our peace, our hearts, and our emotional well-being, that will leave room for us to love even our enemies like they were our friends. This shows a watching world that we bear the recognizable stamp of Jesus’s moral character and identity of being sons and daughters of the Most High God. This love might take an intentional effort, but it shows others the hope and power of Christ’s love.

While boundaries are good and healthy….when done with a biblical view of the how, when, and why. We need to keep in mind that the boundaries we put up are to do so for our own self-control….not to control others. It is done as much to protect them from our high expectations and our need to manipulate as it is to protect our own space, peace and hearts. 

1.  The Lie: “Don’t cross oceans for people who wouldn’t cross a puddle for you.”

The Truth: “Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God.” Hebrews 13:16

And

“Give, and it will be given to you. Good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap. For the measure you use it will be measured back to you.” Luke 6:38

What this means: Sometimes loving others well requires a sacrifice of our time and emotions and even our peace. It might be inconvenient. It might be unappreciated. But God delights in our sacrifices because they are costly and inconvenient.  Loving difficult people who don’t appreciate or return our love is a way that we can worship and praise God. It serves as a reminder of the way that God loved us enough to sacrifice His own Son on the cross in order that we might have eternal life, and it’s a way we can show that love to the lost and hurting. And Jesus will be the one that pours love into our lives and fills our cups to overflowing with the good measure of His love, pressed down, shaken together, and running over into our lives!

Jesus encourages us to live in the freedom of giving and giving and giving without fearing that we will be on the losing end of that kind of love. He sets our hearts free from the fear that we will ever give too much. We can freely give of ourselves because, as my wise mother use to tell us all the time….”You can never outgive God!” He will return more to us than we can ever possibly give…..not only our material resources but also when we give love, blessings, and forgiveness. We will never be on the losing end of love when we love in the pattern of Jesus’ generosity. 

The truth about love is that we don’t wait to act in love when we feel loving or when it benefits us, love is a choice we face every single day with a wide variety of people and circumstances. It’s also an opportunity to show Christ to a hurting world desperately needing His love.  

May we, as daughters of the Most High King, learn to always love like Jesus. 

Do you struggle with the thoughts and emotions milling around in your mind? Do you feel like Satan has filled your head with what isn’t truth, and it is affecting the way you respond to hard situations? The Truth Journal, A 30-Day Guided Journal to Combat the Lies of the Enemy With the Truth of God’s Word, can help you keep God’s truth at the forefront of your thoughts and keep Satan from stealing your peace.

You can order The Truth Journal from Amazon or wherever books are sold. https://a.co/d/g7Y4PML