NOT A SUGGESTION by Kay Kalousek

“The second most important commandment is…‘Love your neighbor as you love yourself.’”  Matthew 22:39 (GNT)

“People bug!”

This is a favorite saying of a good friend and sometimes I can’t say I blame her.  Loving others can get really messy, inconvenient, time-consuming, expensive, and frustrating.  It can also be risky—you put yourself out there for someone and sometimes you get burned for all your trouble!

So why does Jesus say that loving your neighbor is the second most important commandment—right up there with the commandment to love God completely?  How can we do this?  It’s too hard!

The good news is that we don’t have to do this on our own because God does it for us and this is how it works:  When we make the choice to accept Jesus as our Savior and surrender our lives to God, we receive His gift of the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit creates a connection between God and us.  Through this connection, we begin to learn about God and to become more like Him.  The apostle Paul tells us that the Spirit “transforms us into His likeness….” (2 Cor. 2:18, GNT).

Since our connection to God changes us into His likeness and “God is love” (1 John 4:8), we become able to do what would otherwise be impossible for us: love our neighbor as we love ourselves.

And just so we don’t have to wonder, about “who is my neighbor,” Jesus defined neighbor for us in His parable of the Good Samaritan.  Our neighbor is anyone who needs our kindness, help, and support (Luke 25 – 37).

Therefore, through God’s gift of the Holy Spirit that connects us to Him and changes us into His image of love, we have everything we need to keep God’s commandment.

So yes, sometimes “people bug”, but we love them anyway—just as God loves us!

K.K.

Think about it:  What do my relationships with others say about my connection to God?  What can I do today to love my neighbor?