In church yesterday’s sermon was from Eph 4 - building each other up. My bible reading today was 1 Thess 5 - build each other up. Today’s challenge verse is “Do to others…” Could it be that my Father is trying to get through to me?
Julie Taylor replied:
Having been praying about the subject for our Father’s Day Cafe Church and wanted it to be about building. I needed help tying it back to theology and you’ve given me the link that was eluding me. Thnak you. you’ve built me up!!

I felt today’s challenge linked with thoughts on Day 1 about captives ...leading on to prisoners of conscience (PoC)& an unconditional gift to help them seemed right. The PoC appeal says:‘Make a difference in the lives of those who’ve stood up for what they believe is right.  Our beneficiaries may have been harassed, and often imprisoned and tortured, for their beliefs/actions. About 50% of our grants go to prisoners of conscience in exile in the UK while the remaining 50% goes to beneficiaries overseas, with our main focus currently on Zimbabwe and Burma.’ We can help by giving!

This is a difficult one! I feel I can forgive someone who has harmed me or my family in some way, but to love them is asking a lot. Then again, to love sinners might be easier, because we are all sinners, saved from our sins by Jesus. However, I guess doing all that Christ wants us to do is going to be difficult. I pray to almighty God to build within me the love needed to follow the implication of this verse.

This verse shows how Jesus moves his followers beyond the Golden Rule - not just doing to others as you would have them do to you, but going that extra step which is so difficult - loving those who are different from you, those who may have done you harm, those who are indifferent to you. There’s such a long list of people we find it hard to love…...........

Our starting point must be acceptance of God’s love. We need to trust.

I love my children unconditionally, but teenagers can be very challenging and I admit I don’t always like them! 

Jesus’ advice is even harder to follow; we should love others even if we don’t like them and even if they don’t like us.  Surely this is only possible with God’s help.

This love that seeks not its own good but that of the beloved is nothing less than the way that God expresses his feelings for us, all of us. He does not love that he may receive, but that he may give, share, his inner most being with us. The fact that we are encouraged by Jesus to love as he surely loves, is phenomenal in its implications. It means that by God’s grace we can, we can learn to love as God loves or it would never be asked of us.

Vanessa Redgrave received an award at the Baftas on sunday night and in her acceptance speech she shared a piece of advice recieved from her father on acting - remember to never think of yourself but to think as the person you are acting, never make the person you are acting think like yourself.  This really made me think of todays verse as instead of acting, Jesus is asking us to love people as they are, not to ask them to become like us, not to think of ourselves as the example but unconditionally love others.  What a segway from everyday life to see His teaching all around us

That commandment “Love your neighbour as yourself.” is such a challenge to many (most?/all?) of us. If we cannot deal with the bits of us we dislike and hide, how can we deal with the same things we see in others.  The combination of this commandment and this instruction makes it so clear just how we avoid the big issue.  Lord Jesus, catch me next time and every time I fail here and remind me just how much you love me as I am.

Jesus’ irony here may remind us of Jesus’ response when the scribes and Pharisees brought to him the woman taken in adultery: “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.”

Unrequieted love must be one of the most difficult situations for most of us to deal with. From our formative years we like and expect our love to be returned. Many of those with deeply troubled minds can trace their issues back to where this has not happened; where they have loved and trusted only to be rejected or worse.
To love however, is always to risk rejection, indeed without the risk can there be love, for love requires us to be vulnerable, to give our all. Nothing demonstrates this more readily than God giving all for us in Jesus Christ. A love we reject daily, but still he loves.

It’s easier to love those people who you like and don’t hurt you, the challenge is to love those who have hurt you and betrayed your trust.

How many of us have a problem showing real love to those we do love? To extend that to those that we hold in lesser favour is a real test of faith. Or is that real love?

It is difficult to put this into action because most of us do not want to show genuine love to strangers or enemies, and when we try to do it grudgingly it shows.  What we need is a genuine desire to do it, and this will only come if we invite the spirit of Jesus into our lives and allow His love to work through us.