Friday Reading: Galatians 5:14
Key Verse: Galatians 5:14
14 For all the Law is fulfilled in one word, even in this, "You shall love your neighbour as yourself."
Devotion:
I would say that it would be impossible to love your neighbour if you do not have a love for yourself. Finding that love for yourself should not be hard because we all have a basic survival instinct. If we dwell on that survival instinct we can figure out that it is not just self-survival but more of a need to protect yourself and keep you own wellbeing above things around you. That need to make sure that you are OK stems from a love for yourself. Sometimes it is hard to admit that we do have this love for ourselves because we like to think that we would care more for others than ourselves.
God does not want us to bury that love for ourselves but rather to use that love to realise how much we should care for others. It should not just be a case of caring for the beautiful, caring for the kind, caring for your family or even caring for others that care for you; what it should be about is caring for all those people that you come into contact with. That even means for those people that wind you up the wrong way, those that upset you, those that don’t care about you… It does not mean that we have to live our lives according to them or according to their ways. Our ways should be fixed on God’s ways and nobody else’s.
You may think that it would be hard to love some people, but once you get to know the love of Christ then you will find that loving others is a whole lot easier. When you realise just how much Christ loved you even before you got to know Him then you can start to see that someone has got to make that first move to show that they love someone else. It may just be a knowing smile that starts things off but loving someone for who they are instead of who you think they should be will help you to understand why Christ loved you. Don’t turn back.
Points to Ponder:
How would you describe your love for others?
Do you know Christ’s love?