Love your neighbour as yourself

Love your neighbour as yourself Leviticus 19: 18

Jesus looked at them and said, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.” Matthew 19: 26

Joyce Meyer says she found it impossible to love other people when she didn’t love or like herself.  I can agree with that!  I was at my most prickly, awkward and downright difficult when I didn’t love, let alone like myself.  I constantly compared myself to others and came up short every time. In order to try and make myself feel better, I would criticise others. I covered it all over with a veneer of jollity but there was a harsh, unkind edge to it. There was not a lot I could do about it because I needed a God who loves me more than I will never understand to come and set me free from all that criticism and unkindness.

This is the greatest miracle of all; that God, who created the universe with his word, would come down to earth to love and die for me.  He took a hurt, bitter, rejected and under it all dissatisfied person, cross with herself and everyone else, and with love draw her to himself. He took all my sin, shame and guilt and nailed it to the cross and then loved me till all that angry bitterness was soaked away in his love.

I am not perfect but I am forgiven and when I do sin, God in love points it out, not to make me feel bad but to set me free. It truly is incredible – beyond belief but that is the amazing God who loves us. He made each of us to be unique, completely different to everyone else so comparisons are useless. There is no way we can compare ourselves other than we are all humans and some are saved and some are not. God’s command to us is to love them; the saved and the unsaved, the lovely and the unlovely, the disagreeable and agreeable, the friend or enemy.

I used never to be able to say anything nice about anyone including myself but other Christians by being kind to me showed me the way of kindness; others being gracious to me to showed me grace. I marvel now at the longsuffering patience of people and when I get irritated with other people’s lack of grace or kindness, I remember how I used to be.

Underneath every angry, prickly, difficult person is a hurt, rejected human being who needs the love of God shown to them by those who have already received his love, mercy and grace.  I am so thankful to those people who put up with me long enough to show me the Father’s love and tell me about his forgiveness freely given to everyone who asks. That was the start of the Great Adventure.  It is a process that will continue to the day I die but as I receive more and more of the Father’s love, I am able to love myself and therefore to love other people.

 

Do not judge or you too will be judged

‘Do not judge or you too will be judged. For in the same way as you judge others, you will be judged and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. Matthew 7: 1 -2

These words from Jesus can be very hard for us to correctly assess our attitudes.  When does realistically evaluating or testing a situation turn into the sort of judgement that Jesus is talking about?  It is right that we honestly evaluate and ask God to help us when looking at situation or people’s actions that we may not be comfortable with. Jesus himself judged the Pharisees found in Matthew 23. 

Judgments are called decisions in some verses of the Amplified (Romans 11:33) and this can be a helpful way of looking at our motives behind our judgements.  It is what we do with these decisions.

If having evaluated something we move from there to criticism and condemnation then beware. You too will be judged in the same way and you may be found even more wanting than that which you have been criticising.  It is very easy when looking at other people’s faults and weaknesses to overlook your own and move into hypocrisy and self righteousness.  It is no coincidence that immediately following these verses  Jesus talks about talking the plank from our own eye before trying to remove the speck from someone else’s eye.  It is always easier to see someone else’s faults than our own.

Joyce Meyer tells the story of how much she suffered with sickness in one of her pregnancies having had no problems previously.  God showed her that she had judged, criticised and condemned another woman suffering with sickness in pregnancy for her ‘weakness’.  Having judged another, Joyce herself was being judged. 

If we do find the weaknesses and sins of another very trying, especially if they personally impact us, then we must forgive and bless them.  Take their weaknesses to God and ask him to help you deal with them in grace and not criticism and condemnation.  Ask God to help you deal with your weaknesses and show you the planks in your eye. Trust him that as you keep a right attitude he will deal with the other person.

Judging others can become a source of bondage for us as we hold others in judgement.  Dealing with other people in grace, humility and kindness in their weaknesses releases the same flow into our lives and our weaknesses.  As we seek to walk in ever greater freedom let us treat others in their weaknesses as we too would wish to be treated in our own.