7 Ways to Love Others with the Love of Jesus
Jesus calls us to be the light and salt of the Earth and to share His love with everyone we encounter. In Matthew 22:37-39, Jesus tells us that the first and greatest commandment is to love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. He then says “Love your neighbour as yourself.” This is a clear instruction from Jesus saying that we need to let the love of God flow through us into other people and highlights just how important how we treat others is to Jesus.
The flesh and way of the world tell us to treat people the way they treat us. If someone is rude to you, be rude back. If someone hurts you, hurt them even more, so they know they messed with the wrong person. This kind of thinking is the complete opposite of the message that Jesus has given us.
When Jesus was crucified, He was rejected, hurt, shamed and wronged more than any of us will ever face in our lives, but He handled it all with grace, forgiveness and most of all, love. He is our greatest example of how to treat people and how to love them with the love of our Heavenly Father.
As we try to walk in love every day, I thought it would be helpful to share seven practical ways to love others with the love of Jesus – one for every day of the week!
Share Encouragement
Life has a way of getting us all down from time to time, through difficult circumstances that we’d rather not endure. The enemy often uses these times as an opportunity to attack our minds with feelings of discouragement, resentment and anger. We are fighting a spiritual war with the enemy, even more so in the times we live in today, and we need to uplift and encourage each other in times of battle so we can all have victory through Christ.
Hebrews 10:24-25
And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another – and all the more as you see the Day approaching.
A text message from my friend came through early one morning when I was facing quite a rough time of spiritual attack from the enemy. I was beginning to give into the temptation of letting bitterness and anger take root in me, caused from a situation I felt trapped in. The text message was a group of scriptures reminding me that Jesus is the vine and I am the branch and without Him I can do nothing. God was working through my friend’s text of encouragement, to remind me that I can only have the victory through Him. None of us can fight off the enemy and his darkness without being in Jesus, in His Word and in His love. Encouraging each other and reminding one another of how much we are loved by Our Creator, is a wonderful way to share His love.
Encouragement comes in many different forms and there are lots of ways you can encourage those around you, like inviting someone over for a cup of coffee and a chat, sending a text to tell someone you’re thinking about them, sending encouraging scriptures or sermons to give someone spiritual strength in the Lord, or even just smiling at a stranger. Whichever way you choose to encourage others around you, you’re giving them support, hope and confidence, through the love of Jesus.
Pray for Others
Praying and interceding on behalf of someone else is one of the most important ways to share God’s love with other people. Prayer is such a special gift from God, where He invites us to speak openly to Him and to have a relationship with Him. When you pray for someone or over a situation that they’re facing, God’s power, love and grace will surround them and help them fight battles and be restored.
I’ll often be in the middle of doing something quite important, when, out of the blue, God will place someone on my heart. I’ve noticed that if I try ignore the prompting and carry on with my task, He will keep bringing it up again and again in my heart, until I pray for that person and ask God to be with them through whatever it is they may be going through.
One day, God put my stepdad, Freddie, on my heart and told me to pray for healing over his body. Freddie was not doing well and had been in ICU, fighting sepsis. After I had prayed for God’s healing over Freddie, God responded by telling me to tell Freddie to stop fighting the nurses and use that energy to fight the illness instead. I mentioned this to my mom and asked her to give Freddie the message I had received from God. My mom was shocked and told me that one of Freddie’s friends had just been to visit him and prayed with him, because my mom had received the same message from the Lord. That night Freddie gave his life to the Lord and accepted Jesus as his saviour. God can do amazing things for others through your prayers!
James 5:16:
Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective.
You have been made righteous through the blood of Jesus. This means that, according to God’s word, as a Christian, your prayers are powerful and effective. Praying for others releases powerful blessings into their lives. When you feel the Holy Spirit prompting you to pray for someone, pray for them right then and there – even if it’s a silent prayer between you and God – because God has put them on your heart for a reason. You have been called by the Lord to be a prayer warrior to help bring victory into peoples’ lives. Pray and ask God to lift the burdens of those you love, to give them peace and strength and to bless them abundantly through His great love.
Serve Generously
Our prideful flesh says it’s all about us. After all, isn’t life all about keeping ourselves happy? People should do things for us, exactly how we want them to and we shouldn’t be looking after the needs of others because that shows weakness. We should be the one being served and it’s usually our way or the highway. In God’s kingdom the opposite is true, God calls us to use His love to serve one another in humility. He also tells us it is more blessed to give than to receive.
Galatians 5:13
You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh; rather, serve one another humbly in love.
Blessing others by serving them serves us too, because there is no better way to bring yourself joy, than seeing God’s blessings of love and provision flow through you into the lives of other people. Taking our eyes off ourselves, our needs and our problems, and reaching out to serve others helps to put things into perspective and reminds us how blessed we truly are. It also reminds us that God is good, and if He is able to use you to bless and serve others, He will do the same for you as His child.
Serve the people in your life generously, and you will start to see the amazing gifts God has for you. You can’t out give God, He is our constant source of love, provision and joy. Let His gifts flow through you as you serve one another and share His love with those around you.
Kindness and Gentleness
Everyone is fighting battles you know nothing about. There are so many hurt and lost people out there that are dealing with so much more than you’d think. In the world today, words like kindness and gentleness aren’t really spoken about, which is really sad, because these two fruits of the Holy Spirit can have a huge impact on people and can show them that there is still goodness in the world.
Proverbs 16:24
Kind words are like honey, sweet to the soul and healthy for the body.
Gentleness and kindness are about how we treat other people, how we speak to them and the kind of thoughts we have about them. When we treat people the way Jesus treated others, with compassion, understanding and peace, we are showing them God’s love through speaking kind words and being gentle with how we interact with them.
If you have spent time with the Lord and in His Word, you’ll know that gentleness and lovingkindness are who He is. God shows His deep love for us through kindness and compassion, always gently guiding and helping us. God wants us to share this kindness and gentle spirit with the people in our lives, so they can feel His love through our actions.
We all know how heart-warming and uplifting it feels when someone treats us with kindness and gentleness, but we also know how unkind words and actions can really sting. When you feel anger and frustration taking root in you, tempting you to be unkind, think about how Jesus treated others with gentleness and compassion, and let the Holy Spirit work in you so you can become kind and gentle like our Lord Jesus Christ.
Speak Life
Speaking life over someone goes hand in hand with encouragement, but it goes even further. It means you’re speaking blessings, favour and positivity over somebody and their life. It also means that when you talk about that person, you speak about them in a positive light and don’t gossip about them or slander their name.
Speaking life over someone also means supporting their God given dreams and desires. Don’t ever tell someone what they’ve heard from God isn’t possible, or that their dreams are too big. Always show support and speak life to encourage their success.
Proverbs 18:21
Death and life are in the power of the tongue, and those who love it will eat its fruit.
Gossip and ‘spilling the tea’ are very tempting to the flesh. We all love a juicy bit of drama when it doesn’t involve us, but when you indulge in this kind of behaviour, you’re speaking negativity over the person who’s involved, instead of speaking blessings over their situation. The words you choose to say can have serious impacts on you, as well as other people, so always choose to speak life.
Forgive One Another
Forgiveness is one of the hardest things we are called to do as followers of Christ. Forgiveness is a true form of selflessness that allows us to show the love of God working in us and through us and allows us to truly live in harmony with the people in our lives. The flesh wants nothing but revenge and to hurt others the way we’ve been hurt, but Jesus calls us higher and instructs us to forgive one another, just as God has forgiven us.
It is really difficult to forgive someone when they have really hurt you, rejected you or when their actions have been nothing but selfish. This can be especially hard to do when you haven’t received an apology or the other person hasn’t even acknowledged their actions. In this kind of situation, it’s important to remember that forgiveness is a choice you make. It’s not a feeling. You may need to choose forgiveness for this person many, many times, instead of dwelling on your feelings about them. It’s also important to remember that just because you forgive them, does not make what they did okay, it just means you are letting go of the bitterness and resentment and holding onto the freedom and love Jesus died to give you.
Colossians 3:13-14
Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.
Jesus was faced with this kind of pain when he was crucified. He was truly blameless and pure, but He faced rejection, suffering and death to save us from our sins. Jesus handled all of this pain with love and forgiveness in His heart. He didn’t take revenge or hurt the ones who persecuted him, in fact He did the exact opposite – in the middle of His suffering Jesus asked God to forgive them, because they did not know what they were doing. Jesus sacrificed himself for us while we were still sinners and while we were still hurting him. He covered us and made us the righteousness of God through Christ. He is the ultimate example of sacrifice, selflessness, forgiveness and love.
Your marriage is the most important relationship in your life. Your spouse is the one you’ll make all life’s important decisions with, the one who you spend every day with and the one who will be there with you during life’s hardest seasons. Forgiveness is a huge part of a successful marriage and is key to making sure your relationship with your spouse flourishes. No one is perfect and we all make mistakes, yes even you and me! We need to make room for our spouse to make some mistakes along the way, because let’s be honest, not a single one of us will ever go through life not needing to ask for forgiveness.
The same can be said for the other relationships in our life too – we all mess up sometimes and we need to cover each other with grace and forgiveness, so that we can freely receive the grace and forgiveness we need from our Heavenly Father.
Correct with Love
When you have chosen to forgive, sometimes the actions that lead to us being hurt by the other person need to be addressed and corrected. When people act in ways that are hurtful to you, you need to make them aware so they know where your boundaries lie and what kind of behaviours cross those boundaries. This is a crucial step in communication and conflict resolution with the people you share your life with, but this has to be handled the right way. You need to choose to do this through love, kindness and respect.
When we make mistakes and fall short, God gently tells us in our spirit that we shouldn’t have done that and we need to repent and correct our behaviour. God doesn’t do this in a way that condemns us or makes us feel guilty, He does it gently and out of love.
Ephesians 4:15
Instead, we are to speak the truth in love, growing in every way more and more like Christ, who is the head of the body.
When someone hurts you by behaving badly, communicate with them in love and let them know what they could do better in the future to avoid your boundaries from being crossed by them again.
God loves all of us with His unconditional love, and so it’s important to Him that we share the love He gives freely to us with others. We are called to share His light and love with the world, so embrace that calling and try your best to do something every day to share His love with whoever you encounter.
If you feel you need some encouragement, prayers and extra love in your life, please leave a comment and I’ll share the Lord’s love with you in whichever way you need. If you know of anyone going through a difficult time right now, I encourage you to share this with them and ask them how you can best support and love them at this time.
