Loving Well & Loving Often Sample

 Acceptance of others

Y'all loving others can be one of the easiest and one of the hardest things to do depending on the day. There are things that trip us up in the process of loving others. 

Sometimes we decide we would prefer the person if we could control them. If you’re like me you have days where people genuinely amaze you. Sometimes I’m blown away by the generosity, love, and grit that people pour into this world. Other days hold never ending examples of human assembled hatred and pain.

Accepting others cannot be accomplished through control. We have no say in another human’s choices. We can speak our knowledge and our opinions to people with the hope of swaying them, but in the end their choices are theirs. Releasing that control takes the pressure and responsibility off of you and allows you to trust the Lord with their life. 

Sometimes we try to replace our need for Christ’s acceptance and love with human love. When we look to another human for our sole sense of belonging, comfort, and acceptance it will fail us and it will put responsibility on them that they were never made to carry. People are broken, mess up, and fall apart. We say things we don’t mean and fall short of showing God’s grace. 

Our hearts are wired for Christ first. There’s no need nor any way to substitute that love. Think about that though. Why would we even want to? Not one single person on this earth is capable with providing us what He can.

Sometimes we want the people who surround us to look and act like us. It’s crazy how we can each share in this desire for true acceptance and belonging, however it’s so easy for us to deny each other of that very acceptance. We can understand our own need for it, but when it comes to presenting that acceptance to others we get caught up in our own opinions and insignificant differences. 

In order to let someone else be unapologetically themselves we must learn how to love them as who they are. We have to learn how to get past the trivial differences. The differences that tend to wedge between causing us to see “annoying” tendencies instead of full potential through the eyes of our creator.

Challenge: Evaluate your current relationships and the state of your expectations.