Love People

Scripture

“And the second, like it, is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”—Mark 12:31

“You shall not take vengeance, nor bear any grudge against the children of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord.”—Leviticus 19:18 

“Now then, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were pleading through us: we implore you on Christ’s behalf, be reconciled to God.”—2 Corinthians 5:20 

“We love because He first loved us.”—1 John 4:19

Devotional

Have you ever gotten distracted while filling something up? Maybe you were refilling your drink at a restaurant and started talking to someone, or you were filling up a cooler and left the water running and suddenly it happened . . . Your hands or feet start to get wet and you realize that your cup, bucket, or cooler is overflowing! As silly as it may seem, this is a picture of the love that God fills our lives with. 

The last devotional was about loving God, and when His love fills our hearts, there is a radical change that happens to us. In fact, this love fills us up so much that it should overflow through our lives to others. What do I mean by overflow? We should be so filled with the love of God, so changed by it, so moved and motivated by it, so joyful and satisfied with life because of it, that we then share that same kind of love and joy with others in the way we treat people, the way we talk to people, and the way we serve people. When we talk about loving others, we are asking you to allow God’s love to spill out of your life into the lives of others. 

When we truly experience the love of God in our lives, we will not be able to keep it to ourselves. We are commanded in the Bible to love others so that our relationship with 

Jesus can be seen by other people. 2 Corinthians 5:20 reminds us that we are Christ’s ambassadors. An ambassador is someone who represents a person or organization. In this world, God has entrusted us with the amazing honor and responsibility of representing Jesus. 

While that sounds like a huge responsibility, I want to remind you that you do not have to do this alone! Jesus promises to always be with us (Matthew 28:20). We also don’t need to come up with this love on our own, because when we are being filled up with the love of God, we won’t be able to contain it; it will overflow from us! Remember, as 1 John 4:19 reads, “We love because He first loved us.”