Love sets us apart

The difference between Christians and many, not all, but many other people is that we love the person despite our differences. We may not always like what the people do, what they believe in, or even the people themselves, but we always love them because our God tells us to. It’s not always easy, to be honest it’s usually not easy, but we choose to love anyways. God says to love your neighbor as yourself. He doesn’t say love the nice person across the street but hate the guy down the road who purposely walks his dog to your yard to let them do their business. God says to love everyone. In this modern age where it feels like we as Christians are being persecuted from every side it’s very easy to start to hate the persecutors; but loving them (the hard thing to do) is what sets us apart from them. There’s an old song that says “persecuted not abandoned, struck down but not destroyed.” In the midst of everything the Christians all over this world are going through we are still not abandoned, we are still not destroyed, because our God loves us enough to stand by us and lift us up and give us strength; He keeps us going when we can’t go on. Are we perfect and deserving of such love? Absolutely! Not! But God still loves us. Those around us we find hard to handle don’t deserve our love; neither do those who attack us and persecute us and imprison us and beat us and kill us, but because God loves them still we will also love them, even if it’s a forced love it’s love. God hates what those people do to us and we have every right to hate what they do to us too, but He loves the person and that’s the hard part, seeing the hurting soul past the hurtful deeds.  Nothing can separate us from God’s love, a love we receive and show. We must give of the love we are given because those people need to be loved too and they need to be shown Jesus very badly. So have a love without chains and love beyond the deeds, love the person because Jesus loves them and never forget He loves you too