How Can I Love My Friends Better?

When I was in college, and a new Christian, I found myself helping lead our campus fellowship. This was during the time when I was learning to pray, worship and read my Bible for the first time and I quickly realized that the more consistent I was in these disciplines the more effective I was in loving and leading other believers. Two things were happening.

1. I was seeing more of the beauty of Jesus and as this happened I became more and more sold out for him alone. "Sold out," that was the kind of language we used and I still like the way it connects to the transactional implications of being "redeemed."

2. I was growing in knowledge. There were a lot of things in the Bible that surprised me and a few that offended me, but I found information was an ingredient in wisdom. For example, I did not know that hatred was as sinful as murder until I read my Bible. I also found that I did not truly have actionable information until it affected me emotionally; information is never enough. It is like an acorn with tons of potential, but it takes careful nurturing to grow into a tree and that nurturing is usually the result of a two-way prayer life.

I spent last week at a beach house with a gaggle of great friends. I woke up to favorite people talking over coffee and went to bed with friends laughing over board games. By Friday I realized that I'd been disconnected from any spiritual discipline for five days. I love these people and time with them is an important way of deepening that, but at some point disconnection from my Father gave me less to love my friends with. It makes sense that when Jesus was asked about the greatest commandment he talked about loving God and loving people in the same breath. “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself” (Matt 22:37-38).

These two things hang together, you cannot have one without the other. There is a corner where we are invited to love God in order to love people. There’s also a third love that is part of all this, and this one is the starting place. The Bible says that “we love because he first loved us” (1 John 4:19). All of this, our loving God and our loving other people, is the result of something he started. He loved us and as a result we are changed.

So what should we do this Friday? Do one thing right now. Take five minutes and meditate, think with focus, about his love shown in the gospel. Start with two minutes (set a timer) to think about the ugliness and depth of your sin, then take two minutes (reset the timer) to think about how he loved you through the cross. Use your remaining time for thanksgiving.