The Joy Of Serving OthersSample

DAY TWO: Agape Love

So how do we, in practical terms, love others as Christ loves us?

Let people be close to you. God’s love is not a surface feeling or detached from our deepest concerns and thoughts—He draws us in close and knows us intimately—every thought, every fear, every single detail that makes us who we are!

Agape love moves us to treat people with understanding and compassion, not compulsion. If I love you, there’s a time to speak, and there’s a time to be silent. There’s a time to have an opinion; there’s a time to say nothing. There’s a time to let the Holy Spirit say, “The door is not open; don’t speak in this situation.”

When we love people the way God loves us, we are able to place them in His loving hands, believing that God will call these people at the appropriate time out of the grave of their experience.

The key to loving others as Christ loved us is making it our deepest inner passion to love God. That’s where it all begins.

My primary pursuit is to be of God. The totality of my life is directed to loving Him, to knowing Him, to understanding Him, and then to allowing Him to work in me so that it begins to flow out through me to all the people who surround me and whom I come into contact with in my daily life.

We need to remember that we are ambassadors of the heart of God—in the church first, and secondary to the world. We are the Lord’s representatives—witnesses that Christ gave Himself on the cross to redeem each and every person we meet. And our love for one another is to be a sign to the world that we truly are of another spirit!