Quit Being Mean to Me
“Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you;” Matthew 5:43-44
Quit being mean to me, and then I’ll love you. Quit hurting me, and I’ll be kind to you. Quit disappointing me, and I’ll help you. Quit being unkind, and I’ll give to you. Quit being rude, and I’ll be merciful to you. Quit being unthoughtful, and I’ll forgive you. Quit being ungrateful to me, and I’ll be good to you. Quit being disrespectful to me, and I’ll bless you. Quit being unhelpful to me, and I’ll pray for you. Quit verbally attacking me, and I won’t take revenge. Quit letting me down, and I’ll stop talking about you behind your back. Isn’t that what we think? What we say? What we do? What this world teaches? Isn’t that our human nature? Isn’t that how we live? Isn’t that how we live without Christ?
Do you know what’s wrong with that picture? Some of us believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and are thinking the very same way, saying the very same stuff, and doing the very same things. We’re basing how we treat others on how they treat us. All the while we’re toting our Bibles in their pretty little cases to church Sundays, skipping off to our weekly Bible studies, praying our hearts out to God, and, well, you get the picture. The picture is this. We are commanded to love, and some of us are doing anything and everything but when we don’t like how we’re being treated.
It’s taken me years to realize loving God and loving others is not about saying, “I love you,” singing songs in church, studying the Bible endlessly just to study it, loving only people who are kind and loving to me, nor about anything other than this. God commands us to love unconditionally, and if you’re anything like I am, you need the same wake-up call I’ve gotten. Believing in Jesus Christ as Lord is NOT about intellectual faith. It’s about faith in action. It’s about loving God and loving others in action. This entails loving others no matter how they treat us. Even when God calls us to walk away from someone, which sometimes He does, still we are called to do so in love and with mercy and a forgiving heart.
If you are being convicted reading this, please rest assured I am being convicted writing it. Because the Spirit of God is moving on my heart right now that ALL of us need to humble ourselves before God and in His strength seek to love Him with all our hearts and to love others with the love He gives us to love them. And if we are willing to die to ourselves, and to yield to the ways of the Lord, then we will walk in the love to which He has called us. Don’t look to others to determine how to think, what to say, and how to act.
Look to the Lord, and in His mercy, LOVE.