CAPACITY TO LOVE

I like to think that I love everyone. As long as I’m living comfortably unoffended then it’s easy to convince myself. Whereas we naturally choose friends based on common interests, seasons in life and how they benefit us, God chooses differently. When you truly allow Him free reign to select exactly who he wants in your life, he then brings you purpose driven friends.

You can read more on that on my previous post Purpose Driven Friends. Allowing God to handpick intentional friends is powerful. He has used them to strengthen my walk like none other. So I thought I was set, I was trusting God’s ways over mine. Allowing Him to place strategic people in my life while investing in those that I wouldn’t naturally choose.

However, recently he started to stretch me even further. He started to put people in my life, that made me want to head for the hills. You see, it’s one thing to build an uncommon friendship but what about an unoffendable one? That’s an entirely different hurdle.

One day, after feeling emotionally exhausted from a critical spirit, I told God that I didn’t want that person in my life. He then of course, put me in the face of another, where even though I was kind to Him, I knew in my heart I was not okay. Then I felt the Holy Spirit convict me as only he can. “I’ve called you to love the broken, the offendable, the lost. You are not loving like me.” Ouch.

He then began to show me that I needed His supernatural capacity to love. That in our humanness, we can never love like Jesus. Only he can give us the capacity to love like Him. He spent time with, held in His arms, prostitutes, the hurtful and the offendable. Knowing that his disciples would betray Him, he still handpicked them as His closest companions.

This is what sets us apart as Jesus’ followers. It’s really going against the grain. It probably won’t feel warm and fuzzy. His love is costly love. But the more we spend time with Him, filling us up, the more he will give us the grace to love well. To love like Jesus. It’s then, that we gain access to speak dead things to life.

The Spirit of the Lord is on me,because he has anointed meto proclaim good news to the poor.He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisonersand recovery of sight for the blind,to set the oppressed free.” – Luke 4:18

Let us pray for His capacity to love the offendable:

“Lord, I struggle with loving like you. Give me the supernatural capacity to love the broken. Enlarge my heart. Give me the grace and wisdom I need. Bring me divine connections to those that need you. I pray others will see your reflection in me. Amen.”