Episode Transcript
[00:00:07] Speaker A: Welcome to the weekday podcast of Sugar Hill Church where we desire to help you know God and discover your purpose, whether you're exercising, driving, meditating or just hanging out while you tune in with us today. Thanks. We hope these next five minutes help you feel encouraged and inspired for your day.
[00:00:22] Speaker B: Hi everybody. This is Pastor Chuck Allen. I want to thank you for joining me on today's weekday podcast where I want to talk about love being an act of your will. Now, we don't always think about that. We think about love as an emotion. We think about love as an action, but we don't always think about as an act of our will. First, John 3:18 says this my little children, let us not love in word or in tongue, but in deed. And here's the last and in truth, you know, in the sense of in our Christian walk, love is not primarily an emotion, but an act of our will. When Jesus tells us to love our neighbors, he's not telling us to love them in the sense of responding to them with cozy emotional feelings. I mean, you can as easily produce a cozy emotionally feeling on demand as you can a yawn or a sneeze. On the contrary, he's telling us to love our neighbors in the sense of being willing to work for their well being, even if it means sacrificing our own wellbeing to that end. I mean, even if it means sometimes just leaving them alone or just having a ministry of presence there. So in Jesus terms, we can love our neighbors without necessarily liking them. Now just think about that in that sense, the way we've just described that knowing it's not an emotion but an act of our will. We may have neighbors that were just not buddies with. We're not pals with. We're not even friends in the sense of I like them and I hang out with them. But we can love them without necessarily liking them. In fact, liking them may stand in the way for many of us learning how to love folks by making us overprotective. Overprotective sentimentalists. Think about that. Have you ever been an overprotective sentimentalist instead of reasonably honest friends? Now this doesn't mean that liking may not be a part of loving, only that it doesn't have to be. Sometimes liking follows on the heels of loving. I mean, it's hard to work for people's well being very long or too terribly hard without coming in the end to rather liking them as well. Maybe that's why Jesus put love out there, because if we learn to love people, it's amazing how many times we'll learn to like people.
Have you ever prayed regularly for somebody that you just don't like?
Well, if you haven't, try that. Go ahead and picture in your mind right now, who is that person that you may not like a lot and yet Jesus has called us to love that person. Well, here's what I've discovered that when you pray for people that you may not like that much, what will happen is your attitude will change and you might actually find that the enemy changes.
Well, maybe the prayer is, father, show me how to contribute to my neighbor's life even if I don't like them. Whether it's by contact or maybe just by peace, I want to take you back to the passage and remind you one more time, my little children, let us not love in word or in tongue, but in deed and in truth.
Maybe we need to be reminded today that love, it can be an act of our will. And again, it may not mean liking having to always be a part of loving, but I have realized that often when we start with love, we wind up with like God bless you friend. Thanks so much for joining me on today's weekday podcast.
[00:04:14] Speaker A: Thanks so much for joining us today for the weekday podcast. Our prayer is that the encouragement you just heard would help you live more like Jesus us today. We would love to see you at Sugar Hill Church for one of our gatherings each Sunday at 9, 15 and 11, and we're always streaming live at live.sugarhill church. Thanks again for joining us today. As always, if today's message encouraged you, share it with friends and family by tapping the share button. Have an awesome day.
