The Differentiator …

What is the difference between your willingness to take a bullet to save the life of your own child, and your unwillingness to take a bullet for the stranger who is homeless and sleeps on a park bench?

“Biology! My child is my own!” comes one response.

Nope, that really is not it. Being connected biologically is no guarantor of caring anything about the people you’re physically related to. In fact, statistically speaking, you’re more likely to be physically harmed or killed by someone you’re related to than by a criminal you don’t know.

So what is the differentiator?

Love.

Love is the single greatest motivator a human being can experience. Love is the primary source for the greatest experiences humankind has ever witnessed. Here’s dramatic proof:

“For God loved the world so much that he gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. God sent his Son into the world not to judge the world, but to save the world through him,” John 3:16-17.

God’s grace, mercy, and lovingkindness come to us because He loves us. It’s just that simple.

It is a simplicity that we are instructed in over and over again in the Bible, yet to little positive result.

“Listen, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. And you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your strength,” Deuteronomy 6:4-5.

“Jesus replied, ‘You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.’This is the first and greatest commandment. A second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ The entire law and all the demands of the prophets are based on these two commandments,” Matthew 22:37-40.

“So now I am giving you a new commandment: Love each other. Just as I have loved you, you should love each other. Your love for one another will prove to the world that you are my disciples,” John 13:34-35.

“You have heard the law that says, ‘Love your neighbor’ and hate your enemy. But I say, love your enemies! Pray for those who persecute you! In that way, you will be acting as true children of your Father in heaven. For he gives his sunlight to both the evil and the good, and he sends rain on the just and the unjust alike. If you love only those who love you, what reward is there for that? Even corrupt tax collectors do that much. If you are kind only to your friends, how are you different from anyone else? Even pagans do that. But you are to be perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect,” Matthew 5:43-48.

It is no wonder, then, that the Apostle John pleads for us to love one another …

“Dear friends, let us continue to love one another, for love comes from God. Anyone who loves is a child of God and knows God. But anyone who does not love does not know God, for God is love. God showed how much he loved us by sending his one and only Son into the world so that we might have eternal life through him. This is real love — not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to take away our sins. Dear friends, since God loved us that much, we surely ought to love each other. No one has ever seen God. But if we love each other, God lives in us, and his love is brought to full expression in us,” 1 John 4:7-12.

How do we build the kingdom? How do you reach your lost neighbor? Your lost co-worker? Your lost cousin? Your lost city? Your lost nation? A lost and dying world?

Love.

You will respond to the lost condition and needs of others according to your love for them. No love, no care. A little love more akin to pity will result in a lukewarm handout. Love from a sense of duty, and you’ll get a service project. But the love of God received by you, and then flowing through you? That will result in a person who is willing to daily take up his own cross and follow in the loving footsteps of Jesus Christ.

“But the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives: love …” Galatians 5:22a.

Marriages that fail are marriages where one or both persons refuse to love each other. Families that fight are families that refuse to love each other. Churches that stagnate and decline are churches that refuse to love God first, and then love others in His name.

So what’s your love quotient? Do you love God as prescribed in scripture? Do you allow the love of God to flow freely and fully through you to others? Or is love for self keeping you from the greatest experiences and relationships you could ever know?

Scotty