Loving Others

  Do you ever have trouble loving others? I do! As a matter of fact I would be kind of ashamed to admit how many times I struggle with getting along with others. Yet, I believe, many struggle in this area. I think because when people come to me seeking help, it is often seeking help on how to deal with somebody else. I really never see people in my office for counseling because they are having car trouble or financial trouble. Those things might come up but the real reason they are there is because they are having people trouble. They might ask me to tell their wife to drive the car right so that they don’t have car trouble, and they might ask me to help them control their husband’s spending so they don’t have financial trouble, but it always boils down to people problems.

  Let’s face it. It is easier to love ourselves than it is to love anybody else.

Ephesians 5:29 – “For no man ever yet hated his own flesh; but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the church:”

  It is easy to love ourselves for we instinctively know what we want, what we need, how we want to feel, and how soon we desire it. For others, this takes work getting to know the person and then putting them above ourselves. Not only is this not natural but it is hard work and we are lazy people.

  If we are having trouble getting along with others, the underlying problem simply may be our lack of love for God. Our walk with God shapes how we deal with and love other people. When we realize the love of God toward us, and what He did for us when we did not deserve it, it helps us to be more loving to others in our Christian walk.

I John 4:8-11 – “He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love. In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him. Herein is love, not that we 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 ought also to love one another.”

  When you are loved, and you know the depths of that love, it is so much easier to show the same kind of love to others because you know what it looks like. When you are having trouble loving other people, return to the love that God shows you, and return that love by giving it unto others.

Ephesians 4:32 – “And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you.”

  This kind of love will show the lost world who and what Christ truly is and cause them to want to know Him on a personal level.

John 13:35 – “By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.”