I must confess: My love for God is hindered.

“You can only love Christ as much as the person you love the least.” ~ Scott Bondy

Do you feel as if you just got sucker punched in the gut? I sure did! My initial reaction was, “Sure sounds good and church-ey... but is it Biblical? ... Please don’t be Biblically backed up by scripture... please!?!”

Of course you are holier than I and much more refined so you didn’t have the gut reaction to defend against conviction. Only heathens like I respond that way.

Well my friends, almost instantly God brought to mind, " But if we say we love God and don't love each other, we are liars. We cannot see God. So how can we love God, if we don't love the people we can see?" Yes, its scripture. First John, chapter four, verse twenty. (It may be worded slightly different based on which version you own.) Go ahead and look it up yourself. It’s there and yes we must take it to heart.

Unless of course you own an erasable Bible that allows you to pick and choose which scriptures you want to keep. {Yes, I am being extremely facetious here, please don’t throw rotten tomatoes or nasty emails and comments my way!}

So, yes I am lead to believe that that there is a very real reason as to why I feel as if there is a ton of bricks on my chest.

My love for God really is handicapped by my love for the people I rub shoulders with every single day. The throngs of vile sinners (such as myself) that aren’t easy to love naturally.

Now in my defense, (every good Christian has one you know) there really isn’t anyone I don’t love.

Really and truly.

Scouts honor.

Honest.

God has done a work in my heart over the last few years in general and has taught and re-taught me some important lessons in forgiveness and the importance of loving NO MATTER WHO & NO MATTER WHAT.

The source of my conviction isn’t an absence of love. The conviction is more of the result of a lack of expression of love. Let’s be honest. I really have learned to love everyone in a, “God loves you and I want you to be living in a mansion next door to me in glory some day” kind of way. That is the easy part.

Yet there are still those people I run into who rub me the wrong way and quite frankly for one reason or another I would rather look the other way when I run into them at wal-mart (yeah, I’m sure I’m the only one who has ever done that) and altogether avoid any type of communication period. For whatever reason some people are just plain mean and others go out of their way to hurt those around them.

Now I’m not saying I haven’t been taught to forgive, trust me, God has nailed that lesson down well in my heart, or so I thought. However, now I am starting to learn that my forgiveness is barely scratching the surface. It is time to reach towards a much deeper level of forgiveness by moving beyond the words, “I forgive them Lord” towards the actions that have me pursuing ways to prove it with love by taking me out of my comfort zone.

God has spoken to my heart and I know that I need to look for ways to visibly reach out in love to those whom I would much rather avoid.

It is vitally important considering my love for Him depends on my love for them.


DISCUSS: Who in your life to do you need to reach out in love to? Is it a family member who has hurt you deeply? A church member who offended you somehow? The person who scans your groceries? The neighbor who you've never even introduced yourself to? The person who....