Love Others

But when the Pharisees heard that He had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together. Then one of them, a lawyer, asked Him a question, testing Him, and saying, “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?”

 

Jesus said to him, ‘You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’

 

On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.”

Matthew 22.34-40

These two commandments, the ones that Jesus said all the Law and the Prophets hang on, are based on love.

But what does this love mean? And how can we love others the way God wants us to if we don't even love ourselves the way He does.

This love, this act of loving, this loving myself stuff is what I've been working on and learning about recently.

I have to be honest with you here, do a little soul baring.  I don't love myself.  I have a very low opinion of myself. 

And I don't believe I'm any different than a million other people out there who feel that they don't measure up or aren't worthy of....whatever.  How can we possibly love ourselves when this world requires us to perform to a certain standard to be acceptable, especially when its a standard that not even God expects us to live up to.

I'm in the process of learning to love myself the way God loves me.  It's really quite eye opening and freeing.  Because in seeing how He loves me, I see how He loves others and it creates in me the ability to love others too.

But first comes loving Him.  In doing that, I have found that I need to throw out every definition of love that I have learned over the years.  And trust me, there are many definitions of love out there.  In fact, each person has their own idea of what it looks like.  And you can't blame them, their idea of love comes from a deep need that they have, a need that has never been met.  This ties in with my thoughts on expectations.  There is a need; we enter into a relationship and the need becomes an expectation of the other person to meet.

But I digress....(I do that a lot)

The only definition of love that matters is God's.  And only He can reveal it to us.

I think that may be a key; understanding who God made us to be, our unique personality and gifts.  But what is the hardest thing to grasp is that God loves us in an incredible way.  He loves us perfectly and completely and there is nothing we have done or could possibly do to earn that love.

We need to stand confident in that love.  We need to believe that His love for us is true.