This has really been on my heart lately and is probably one of my biggest challenges; loving others. I don't mean your family or your closest friends. I mean loving people you don't even know or might not like that much. The greatest and first commandment is "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your mind." (Matthew 22: 37-38) This commandment has it's challenges in itself, but here is the second commandment: "You shall love your neighbour as yourself" (Mark 12:31) This has definitely been my most recent struggle. I am to quick to judge others and I am always around the people that is easiest to love. I am scared to be vulnerable to others, because I don't want to get hurt.
Many people that I seek guidance from have told me that if you trust in God and if your heart belongs to him, then there is nothing else that can harm me. I think what is holding me back is the fear of rejection. I've always had trust issues and have been hurt by others, slowly I've started to build up this wall to keep others out. There's still things that I can tell others, but there is still some truth hidden behind my wall. It's not that I don't trust the Lord, it's that I don't trust myself. I'm scared of scaring people away. No matter what, I'll never be perfect in any way, but there is always room for improvement. This is definitely one of my challenges and something I am working on. Sometime's you need to go back to the the first commandment of loving the Lord, so you can do a better job at loving others.
One of my goals this year is to love others. Not in a superficial kind of way, I don't want to just skim the surface. I want to be able to build these relationships that are so much more then that and not fear the heartbreaks, because in the end, it's the love that I give that they'll remember. You don't want to miss the opportunity to show the love of Christ by loving others.
"For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord."
(Romans 8:38-39)
