Daily Journal: 7 November

Who Will I Choose

To Love Today?

I have been told love is a choice. We may not think we need to choose to love our family but we do choose to show love to them on difficult days or through difficult seasons of life. We might forget to show a consistent level of care and sensitivity that they need when we’re distracted by our own experiences. But loving them is something we want to do, to demonstrate our love, to enrich and strengthen them.

In order to love others, we need to recognise and be strengthened by love ourselves.

John 10:14-16 (NIV)

“I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me— just as the Father knows me and I know the Father—and I lay down my life for the sheep. I have other sheep that are not of this sheep pen. I must bring them also. They too will listen to my voice, and there shall be one flock and one shepherd. 

I am part of the sheepfold. Jesus lay down His life for me and brought me in when I had rejected His love.

Luke 15:1-2 (NLT)

Tax collectors and other notorious sinners often came to listen to Jesus teach. This made the Pharisees and teachers of religious law complain that he was associating with such sinful people—even eating with them!

Who is rejecting Jesus’ love in this scripture?

To receive Jesus’ love, I must first recognise my need for it. I reach out for it like someone parched for water.

Jesus shows a consistent and deeper-than-imaginable level of care and love toward the most downtrodden and rejected of society.

When the religious leaders were despising people for their lifestyle and rejecting them, Jesus was giving them attention and talking with them. He didn’t look past them, He looked right at them and saw them for who they were. He didn’t accept their lifestyle but He didn’t despise them and disregard them for it. To Jesus, they were people worth loving, people worth spending time with. And I am one of them.

As I go into my day, knowing there are many people around me needing care and attention, knowing they’re not always the most obvious ones, knowing my own limitations, who will I choose to love today?

Lord God, fill me with your heart. Direct me and help me to see past the obstacles that would prevent me from showing love to people the way you want me to. Help me to see their needs so that I can give them what you want me to. Not from myself, Lord, because I may see the wrong things. But you are in me, so I ask that by your power and your love, I will be what you need me to be for the people you need me to touch. In the name of Jesus I pray, amen.