April 21, 2009

The People In Your Neighborhood

Remember that song? Definitely one of my favorites from back in the day. Remember when Jesus told us to love our neighbors? Definitely hard to do. A couple reasons why I think this is so hard...

1. when Jesus said "neighbor" He meant anyone and everyone we come in contact with
2. the love that Jesus is telling us to show is a love that puts the receiver of this love ahead of or above the giver
3. Jesus is telling us to do this, He's not so much giving us an option or choice in the matter because He knows that if you and I really want to follow, then we'll obey
4. people can be hard to love because they can be rude, cold, annoying, ignorant, selfish, etc which makes neighbors hard to love because they are people
5. I am a person, which means sometimes I am rude, cold, annoying, ignorant, selfish, etc and not good at loving my neighbors as a result

My challenge to you and I is to really try to "love your neighbor as yourself" for 1 entire day. From morning until night, striving to put everyone else before ourselves and then to post on this blog your experiences. Leave your name or don't, whatever, just share the stories of our little experiment so we can see how it goes. The good, the bad and the ugly. Try to live a whole day being completely selfless and let's see what happens. Could be pretty interesting.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

My day of "trying to be selfless" ended about 11am, when I got distracted by life and forgot that I was trying to spend the day being selfless. Kind of ridiculous, I know. If only I could find a way to keep my eyes focused on Jesus amid all of the distractions, I might be a little better at consistently following His word.

Matt Lipan said...

Anonymous: thanks for the read and comment. at least you made it to 11am! small steps. lucky for us each new day brings a new opportunity to have a selfless day.

i want to encourage you to keep spending time in the Word each day and if you're not, it might help you keep your "eyes focused on Jesus."