Galatians 6:2
2Bear one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.
When Jesus said you are to love thy neighbor as thyself, it meant to treat everyone the way in which you desire to be treated. Now it may seem easy enough but the person who does not love their own self, will not understand. And the one who is so self-absorbed and consumed with their own self-love does not understand either. The person who doesn't love their own self has to learn how to love and the one who is consumed with self-love has to learn humility and sacrifice. Loving someone else takes a level of humility. The only way to learn how to love is through Christ. 1John 4:8 says that God is love and also says that if you know love then you know God. So He is the very definition of love and demonstrated as the word says through the sacrifice of Jesus. Without sitting at the feet of Jesus and really learning, bearing one another's burden seems like too great of a task. If you are having a great moment, you want those around you to celebrate you. If you are having a not so great moment you want those around you to help lift you up, encourage, pray and even cry with you. Just as you desire that support, so do those around you. But some people just really choose not to do so. If it is not about what you can do for them, they have no interest in you. Love is a choice. Once you know who Christ is, how much He loves you and what He has done for you, your willingness to love becomes a choice. Yes we are commanded to love being a follower of Christ but n order to bear one another's burdens sincerely, you have to love. Without love, you cannot bear another person's burden. To bear means to carry, endure, sustain as defined by Merriam-Webster's Dictionary. Attempting to do it to say you are a good Christian or make yourself look good in the eyes of others will not sustain. You will walk away before God says it is time to do so. In the newly released film, X-Men: Days of Future Past, the young Charles Xavier refused to use his gifts and said it was to painful. The future Professor X told the younger Professor X, "You're not talking about their pain but yours. You must learn to bear the pain without it consuming you." 1Corinithians 13 says that love is not self-seeking. Love is not about you. It is about the willingness to get beyond you. That's what God did. He put aside His desire for the sake of you and I. Christ allowed His blood to be shed for the sake of you and I.
P.S. Remember this Sunday, June 8th at 7pm EST to tune into my interview on Village Connector TV's Between the Covers for Book Lovers via the link here: http://new.livestream.com/
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