Loving the Unlovable
I rededicated my life to Jesus when I was in high school. Since that time, I have been a member of five different churches. Each experience has been unique. One ended very badly, some good, and Canyon Creek continues to remain great (no, I’m not being paid to say that!). There is one common thread among them all, though. I was highly involved in each. Some would say it is because I recognize God’s call to serve others. Some might think I got guilted into it. But the truth is, I just don’t like to sit back and watch. I’d rather be in the thick of things than sitting on the sidelines.
Surprisingly (to me, anyway), many times my activity has placed me into leadership positions. And do you know what comes with leadership??? Difficult people! I have had countless people that have grated against my nerves, made life miserable, and generally tested my patience. My old pastor had a very special term for these people: EGRs (extra grace required).
Sometimes I succeeded in grace for these people. Sometimes I made it through by the skin of my teeth. There is a funny truth about God in all this, though. Those who irritate you the most are the ones He places into your path the most! If you don’t learn to love them, look out, cause you are probably going to be stuck with them a long time! It builds your character, patience, and, most of all, your capacity to love.
That’s what we are going to talk about this week: love. There are many kinds of love. There is selfish love, friendly love, love of things (like Pastor Brandon and his shoes☺). But I want to focus our attention on the greatest form of love: agape love.
As we know from 1 Corinthians 13, agape love is many things. Patient, kind, never envying, never proud, never rude. I read that list and think how great it is to love like that. Then I think about my average day and realize I just can’t do it. Try as I might, I can never live up to the kind of love this chapter describes. Not on my own, anyway. That is because it is only achievable through God. It is a divine love. A pure love. It is the kind of love that God showed to us as he watched his son hang from a tree. Gotta tell you, if I was told that the only way everyone else could be saved was to watch my son, Jonathan, die a horrible and painful death (even knowing he would rise again!), I’d say “too bad, so sad.” (Aren’t you glad I’m not God??) I just couldn’t do it. But John 3:16 says that “God so [agape] the world that he gave his one and only son.” I am constantly awed by that kind of love. But that is God. He seeks the best for us, and that is what agape is about.
I know 1 Corinthians 13 is the most well known passage about love, but my personal favorite is in 1 John. This book of the bible is exploding with knowledge about agape love. In both chapters 3 and 4, we can find two distinct features of agape. Agape is always sacrificial and it is always demonstrative. Look at Christ’s death. God sacrificed Jesus to show us our importance to Him. But there is more to be learned in these books. We also find that we are to love others with this same agape love that God showed to us. 1 John 4:7-8 says “Let us love one another. For love is of God, and everyone that loves is born of God and knows God. He that does not love does not know God, for God is love.”
The knowledge of this and the execution are two different things. Every time God puts another EGR into my path, I try my best to love them. But in the end, my translation of love looks more like wanting to take a shovel to their heads. The problem is I am trying to love them on my own. And what I am falls significantly short of pure and divine. So how do we love these people that drive us crazy?
Well, you can’t, unless God helps you to love them. It is only with the Spirit driving us that we can ever hope to show agape love to others. If you want to exude the kind of love that is described in 1 Corinthians, then you are going to have to pray and ASK God to fill you with it. If you do nothing else in all your life as a Christian, then do this. Matthew 22:36-40 tells us it is the greatest of all God’s commandments. “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. The second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself. All the other commandments and all the demands of the prophets are based on these two commandments.” Did you catch that last part? Everything else is based on loving God and others with an agape love! It is that important! No wonder God keeps placing those same kinds of people in our paths until we get it right.
When I first started studying this week’s lessons, I really felt like I should challenge each of you. Every single one of us has an Extra Grace Required person in our lives. Therefore, every single one of us has an opportunity to grow in agape love this week. Because agape love is sacrificial and demonstrative, we can’t just pray and ask God to fill us with it. We have to ACT on it. So here is your challenge (I’m there with you; I’m challenging myself as well!):
1. Prayerfully choose a difficult person whom you have trouble loving.
2. Ask God to fill you with agape love for this person.
3. Ask God to show you how that translates into action.
4. Do it!
I know, I know. I hear the comments already. “But what if I don’t feel like loving them?” “I don’t know if I can do this!” I know, believe me, I know. Keep in mind this very important fact: Agape love is a response, not a feeling! As God fills you, you can act. You may hate (or love) having to do what He asks of you, but that is not the issue. The issue is responding.
I want to add at this point that I know this challenge will be very difficult for some. Many of you have gone through situations that I can’t even begin to imagine. Some of you have been hurt so deeply by others that the idea of ever loving them again is incomprehensible. I’m sorry. My heart truly aches for you this week. I’m sorry that you ever had to endure the pain. I’m sorry that one you once thought highly of abused you. Maybe the only thing you can do this week is beg to be emptied of hate, let alone filled with agape love. But please, don’t let that stop you. Pray and ask. And keep asking. God will do it. I promise. It may take days or weeks or years, but if you ask, He will do it.
Not everyone who takes up this challenge will see results. Sometimes people don’t want to love you. Sometimes it takes a long time of sacrificially and demonstratively loving them before a dent is made. Others may see immediate results. Whatever the case is for you this week, please share it. You don’t have to give specifics if you don’t feel comfortable, just let us know if you saw improvement. Remember to look for change not only in the other person, but also in you! Sometimes, the issue is about changing your heart, not theirs.
The last thought I want to leave you with is this: don’t give up. You may think the situation is hopeless. You may have already been plugging away at loving someone for years and have yet to see any change. It will come. At the end of 1 Corinthians 13, we find the ultimate reassurance of this. It says, “love never fails.” The Greek for “fails” is ekpipto. It means to be without effect, to be in vain. When you love with an agape love, it will not be in vain! Hold on to that promise this week and however long it takes!
Sonya
Surprisingly (to me, anyway), many times my activity has placed me into leadership positions. And do you know what comes with leadership??? Difficult people! I have had countless people that have grated against my nerves, made life miserable, and generally tested my patience. My old pastor had a very special term for these people: EGRs (extra grace required).
Sometimes I succeeded in grace for these people. Sometimes I made it through by the skin of my teeth. There is a funny truth about God in all this, though. Those who irritate you the most are the ones He places into your path the most! If you don’t learn to love them, look out, cause you are probably going to be stuck with them a long time! It builds your character, patience, and, most of all, your capacity to love.
That’s what we are going to talk about this week: love. There are many kinds of love. There is selfish love, friendly love, love of things (like Pastor Brandon and his shoes☺). But I want to focus our attention on the greatest form of love: agape love.
As we know from 1 Corinthians 13, agape love is many things. Patient, kind, never envying, never proud, never rude. I read that list and think how great it is to love like that. Then I think about my average day and realize I just can’t do it. Try as I might, I can never live up to the kind of love this chapter describes. Not on my own, anyway. That is because it is only achievable through God. It is a divine love. A pure love. It is the kind of love that God showed to us as he watched his son hang from a tree. Gotta tell you, if I was told that the only way everyone else could be saved was to watch my son, Jonathan, die a horrible and painful death (even knowing he would rise again!), I’d say “too bad, so sad.” (Aren’t you glad I’m not God??) I just couldn’t do it. But John 3:16 says that “God so [agape] the world that he gave his one and only son.” I am constantly awed by that kind of love. But that is God. He seeks the best for us, and that is what agape is about.
I know 1 Corinthians 13 is the most well known passage about love, but my personal favorite is in 1 John. This book of the bible is exploding with knowledge about agape love. In both chapters 3 and 4, we can find two distinct features of agape. Agape is always sacrificial and it is always demonstrative. Look at Christ’s death. God sacrificed Jesus to show us our importance to Him. But there is more to be learned in these books. We also find that we are to love others with this same agape love that God showed to us. 1 John 4:7-8 says “Let us love one another. For love is of God, and everyone that loves is born of God and knows God. He that does not love does not know God, for God is love.”
The knowledge of this and the execution are two different things. Every time God puts another EGR into my path, I try my best to love them. But in the end, my translation of love looks more like wanting to take a shovel to their heads. The problem is I am trying to love them on my own. And what I am falls significantly short of pure and divine. So how do we love these people that drive us crazy?
Well, you can’t, unless God helps you to love them. It is only with the Spirit driving us that we can ever hope to show agape love to others. If you want to exude the kind of love that is described in 1 Corinthians, then you are going to have to pray and ASK God to fill you with it. If you do nothing else in all your life as a Christian, then do this. Matthew 22:36-40 tells us it is the greatest of all God’s commandments. “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. The second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself. All the other commandments and all the demands of the prophets are based on these two commandments.” Did you catch that last part? Everything else is based on loving God and others with an agape love! It is that important! No wonder God keeps placing those same kinds of people in our paths until we get it right.
When I first started studying this week’s lessons, I really felt like I should challenge each of you. Every single one of us has an Extra Grace Required person in our lives. Therefore, every single one of us has an opportunity to grow in agape love this week. Because agape love is sacrificial and demonstrative, we can’t just pray and ask God to fill us with it. We have to ACT on it. So here is your challenge (I’m there with you; I’m challenging myself as well!):
1. Prayerfully choose a difficult person whom you have trouble loving.
2. Ask God to fill you with agape love for this person.
3. Ask God to show you how that translates into action.
4. Do it!
I know, I know. I hear the comments already. “But what if I don’t feel like loving them?” “I don’t know if I can do this!” I know, believe me, I know. Keep in mind this very important fact: Agape love is a response, not a feeling! As God fills you, you can act. You may hate (or love) having to do what He asks of you, but that is not the issue. The issue is responding.
I want to add at this point that I know this challenge will be very difficult for some. Many of you have gone through situations that I can’t even begin to imagine. Some of you have been hurt so deeply by others that the idea of ever loving them again is incomprehensible. I’m sorry. My heart truly aches for you this week. I’m sorry that you ever had to endure the pain. I’m sorry that one you once thought highly of abused you. Maybe the only thing you can do this week is beg to be emptied of hate, let alone filled with agape love. But please, don’t let that stop you. Pray and ask. And keep asking. God will do it. I promise. It may take days or weeks or years, but if you ask, He will do it.
Not everyone who takes up this challenge will see results. Sometimes people don’t want to love you. Sometimes it takes a long time of sacrificially and demonstratively loving them before a dent is made. Others may see immediate results. Whatever the case is for you this week, please share it. You don’t have to give specifics if you don’t feel comfortable, just let us know if you saw improvement. Remember to look for change not only in the other person, but also in you! Sometimes, the issue is about changing your heart, not theirs.
The last thought I want to leave you with is this: don’t give up. You may think the situation is hopeless. You may have already been plugging away at loving someone for years and have yet to see any change. It will come. At the end of 1 Corinthians 13, we find the ultimate reassurance of this. It says, “love never fails.” The Greek for “fails” is ekpipto. It means to be without effect, to be in vain. When you love with an agape love, it will not be in vain! Hold on to that promise this week and however long it takes!
Sonya
posted by Sonya Day | 9:05 AM
3 Comments:
Hi Sonya,
Very encouraging and inpirational words of wisdom you put forth! :) My question to you is: What does that look like?! There is someone at work who, no matter how nice I am to her, just will not back down on the meanness. I've asked her what I did to upset her and the answer is always, "nothing." The manager has asked her what the problem is, and gets the same response. I just don't know how to love someone who just won't have it, and puts more effort into being mean than just letting go of whatever the problem was. Other than being nice...how do I show her love? How do I agape someone who is just so mean?
Mari, thanks for the question. You describe the very type of person I meant when I said not everyone will want to be loved. As to your question of how, my answer is I don't know. Sorry. It will look different with each person. Once for me, it was inviting someone to a party we had. Another time it was doing a girl's night with them. Sometimes it is baking cookies and sometimes it is just complementing them on something they care deeply about. For you, I think it is definitely a situation where you are going to have to pray and ask God to specifically show you what you need to do. It might be something you think is completely crazy or simplistic or unremarkable. Whatever it is, God is the only one who is going to be able to tell you.
I wish I had a simpler answer, but I'm afraid that is the best one. I will be praying for you that God shows you exactly the WHAT and WHEN with this person. I also am praying that God gives you the patience and grace to keep at it and that you will get to see her meaness turn into something good.
Sonya,
Please let me know if I am an EGR!!
Rachel
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