Loving the Not So Lovable

“11Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.12No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us. 13By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit.” - 1 John 4:11-13

For the most part, loving people isn't too difficult. Its really more a part of who we choose to be that determines how well we love others. It has to do more with us than them. But every once in a while we can encounter people who make it hard to love them. They are not so lovable. You know the type I'm talking about. They are bitter and sour and their presence churns within us feelings of uneasiness and despair, dread and defeat, anger and frustration. It is hard to love people like that. They are so closed off to the people around them that it is nye on to impossible to find ways to connect with them beyond the surface. Its hard to break through that crusty exterior. So, more often than not, we give up on them and chalk them up as a lost cause. We begin warning everybody else to just avoid them at all cost. We, ourselves, put up barriers that make it even harder to love them. We, like the rest of the world, say to ourselves and enact in our lives toward them, “You hurt me, so I hurt you back.” “You reject me, so I reject you entirely.” We forget that Jesus says, “You hurt me and I'll just love you more.” “You reject me, but I have excepted you right where you are.” 

The truth is that even when it comes to these type of “not so lovable” people, the problem with loving them is still more to do with your character, with your heart, with your faith, than it is to do with them. When you choose to live in the Spirit and set the Spirit free to work in and through you, you will easily be able to love those “not so lovable” people by the power and might of the Spirit at work in you. My challenge to you this week is to look back over your life and think about the people in your life that fall into that category of “not so lovable” and reflect on how you maybe should have loved them differently or more. Then reflect on people in your life now whom you struggle to love and seek out ways to love them publicly. Not for show but for the Spirit. Salvation hangs in the balance.