To Overflow With Love

By Gerjo Ben Van Der Merwe

How strong is your love for other people? Do you really care for people who suffer? Are you anxious about the people around you who are on a direct road to damnation? Do you feel nauseous when you know for sure that the people close to you still do not have a relationship with God?

How I wish I could honestly shout out loud, Yes! to this question.  However, when I look at my own life I see that I spend much more time on my own stuff than to be concerned with other people's fate and the paths they choose to take. Yes, they choose to walk that path. Don't hold me responsible for their wrong choices, I want to say to my defence.

But it doesn't work like that in God's world. When God's Spirit comes to live inside us, when we accept Jesus as our Saviour, the process is turned around so that we focus less on ourselves and more on the people around us.

Our hearts change and we start feeling differently about the lost people around us and then we can't keep quiet about it. Then we have to support others in a good way. We have to push and pull and motivate and demonstrate and be an example and more, so that they will not be lost. We must overflow with love; yes, love must flow out of us... we must overflow with love.

Like Paul: 8We loved you dearly. Not content to just pass on the Message, we wanted to give you our hearts. And we did.

And this is when I hang my head in shame. Will I sacrifice my life for others?

I suspect, no. And I don't think this is what God expects of us. What He does expect, is that we love others. We must really try to look away from what we want to do and what we want to get and what we... We must focus on the people around us.

Earlier I said this was a process. When the Holy Spirit moves in, there is no major explosion that makes us suddenly overflow with love for our fellow man. No, it is a process where we purposefully have to focus on the people around us every day. I actually want to say we have to take our heads and turn them with our hands so that our faces are turned to the people around us, so that we can see their need.

That is what we must do. Yes, what is possible for us to do is to consciously see the people and their hardship. The Holy Spirit will do the impossible and turn our hearts. Then, like Paul, we will start to overflow with love. Then everything inside us will drive us to also show them Jesus' message of salvation, and who knows, maybe one day we will love them so much that we will also be prepared to sacrifice our lives for others. Who knows... ?

Scripture

  1 Thessalonians 2:5-12

Reflection

Do you really care for people who suffer?

Do you feel nauseous when you know for certain that people close to you do not have a relationship with God?

Do you have the courage to do something about it?

Prayer

Lord, there is no greater love for someone else than to tell him or her about the way that can save them from eternal death. Please help me to love others so much that I will not hesitate to share the truth with them. I ask this in Jesus' Name. Amen.

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