Jesus simplified our faith into two things Love God and Love Others. We spent the last couple of days talking about Loving God. Today we will take a look at what it means to love others.
Read Philippians 2:1-11 According to these verses what does it look like to love others? How did Jesus love others? By this description how are you doing at loving others? Where are you doing well? Where do you need some work?
I love loving others!!! When we love others it means being a part of a community and accepting others for who they are and what they do. And if we love God, then He asks us to use that same love with everyone else. We shouldn't be striving for the top and pushing people out of our way to get there. By thinking about ourselves, we push others away. But if we think self-mindedly we are doomed to become obsessed in our own sucesses and failures and thats where i think depression spouts from. People get to cought up in their complacency in the world and they brood upon their own problems. When we love others and care for others, the world isnt just about us anymore, our worlds open up, with more people, more connections, more opportunities, and more happiness. Jesus showed his love for us by making the ultimate sacrifice. He lived his life teaching the ways of God and helping others, with little care fr what happened to him. He lived a totally selfless life devoted to others and he loved us enough that God would come down from HIs throne on high and would humble himself to take human shape. Even as a human though he was perfect. He did not sin and helped the weak, the wounded, and the disabled. God is a builder of the weak and thats what we should be too. We should build up the weak and help those who cant help themselves. WE must too try to live selfless lives like Jesus. ANd so now we too must humble ourselves as servants and serve the weak and the downfallen. WE must make ourselves builders of men and invest in the people we help and build them up so that they may one day help others too. But most of all we must bow down before God and praise his name and just thank him for his big sacrifice. The fact that God came down from heaven to die for us is just amazing. We are so undeserving of any sacrifice of that magnitude. So we should spend every day praising his holy name. FOr GOd is Good. He is the alpha and omega, he is the beginning and the end and through him we, on this earth, can reach our full potentials.
ReplyDeleteZack-great point about depression coming from self-centeredness. I found that to be true in my life. At those times when I am serving others and thinking about their needs I feel pretty good. When I am out the serving mode, I can get really bogged down and feel pretty low.
ReplyDeletei think summer is time when the selfcenteredness begins. we all get out of school and theres a lot of time that we have to ourselves that we have not had before and we try to do everything we wanted to do during the year that we didnt feel we had enough time to do. we indulge upon our desires and we get super-self-centered because we have a lot more time to ourselves. its a good thing that the trip is early off this year it can jump start our serving hearts this summer and start a summer of serving.
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