Reflecting God’s Aggressive Love

[Chad]

Application: Reflecting God’s Aggressive Love.
By: Matt Hardwick in Applying Concepts, Service

God’s love for humans is aggressive. It revolves around doing the impossible to prove to humanity how He loves us. Time after time, He reveals Himself to mankind in more serious and personally significant ways as history has progressed. The ultimate example of His aggressive love is His willingness to live as a human and die a human death, all to bring mankind nearer to Himself.

So, how do modern Christians reflect this aggressively loving God to all the people around them? I thought about what it means to reflect God’s aggressive love, and what it means we, as Christians, must be aware of. I hope that the considerations that I have been able to think of are relevant to this and helpful for you in the application for your life. This is what I feel a Christian must remember in order to effectively reflect God’s aggressive love:

• Be determined to find opportunities to serve other people around you. Look for service projects if organized activities are how you work best. If you are more oriented to smaller acts of kindness and love, there are plenty of opportunities in every day life if you are ready for them and determined to take advantage of them. Be confident and do not stray from your mission of reflecting God’s love to others, no matter how tempting it becomes to stop. Seek out the ways you can help others, and make sure that you follow up on everything you begin.

• Pay attention to the people around you. Take notice of the small ways that others try to express how they are feeling, and take the time to understand why they would feel a certain way about a situation or circumstance. It is surprising to me how many times I think I understand what someone is going through and start to give them advice without even trying to understand their true feelings. If you take the time to understand just what someone needs, you can avoid a lot of mistakes and get to helping them with the real need first.

• Do not let missed opportunities affect your desire to continue reflecting God’s love. Everyone is imperfect, and I certainly fit into this category as well. We can’t possibly be looking for every single opportunity, and when you miss one do not get down on yourself for it. It can be easy to give up because opportunities to reflect God’s love seem to slip through our hands when we desire to practice it the most. Don’t let it demoralize you to the point at which you are unwilling to keep going and looking for ways to be a reflection of Christ to others, because there is nothing abnormal or different about missing signals and forgetting to pay attention to the needs of others. See your mistake and try to pay more attention in the future.

• Remember who it is you are representing. He has a reputation, and everything you do, good or bad, affects it. When you show someone that they are not worth your effort or time, they will equate this with what Christ is about. It can cause a lot of mistakenly hurt feelings and push people even farther away from God.

• Trust God to do what He says He will do, and then do your part in it. Understand this, you cannot do it all by yourself. You are not able to change people’s hearts, nor are you able to fix everything about an individual’s circumstances. The important thing is that you are reflecting God’s love for them, and then stepping back and not attempting to force them into coming to grips with their need for God. Only God can create this realization in them, and your duty is to reflect God’s love towards them through kindness, service, and love.

• Go beyond merely following opportunities on your schedule. Make extra time and put yourself into situations where you will be pushed into reflecting God’s love to those around you. If you wait for the opportunity to come to you, it may never happen, and then you cannot truly say that you have done everything that you could to turn others toward God. Whenever you see a need, make a solution. Even more than that, go out of your way to seek out the needy, so that you may show them who God is through your actions.

• Leave behind all your worry about how people will react to your actions. Just start practicing reflecting God’s love to them regardless of whether or not they accept it or show gratitude in return. In all likeliness they will appreciate you for what you are doing if you are adequately reflecting God’s love, even if they do not openly express these feelings to you. If you are too afraid of what people will think of you to take a chance for the sake of Christ’s reputation, you are focusing on the wrong aspect of this interaction. The main point is that you are reflecting God’s love, and so if they reject you, they are rejecting God in reality. You do not need to worry about how they see you, even if you worry for the reputation of Christ, because God is using you in just the way that He means to.

• Look to the examples given in the Bible of those in history who have reflected God’s love. The Bible is full of examples to show us how to live as a reflection of Christ, in the old and new testaments alike. They are bold and confident in God’s power over their life, and they forget about trying to look good in society’s eyes. They openly proclaim God’s word and reflect God’s compassion to all those around them.

• Be sure in your knowledge of who God really is. If you are unable to explain who God is, you will probably be unable to reflect Him in your life. It requires a lot of study about God’s true character to discover what you should be doing to show others who He is. It is essential to know the object of your reflection before you can adequately reveal Him to those around you. A mirror cannot reflect the light unless it is in the full shining of the light.

This is my take on this. Do you have another conception of our task in Reflecting God’s aggressive love? I want to know how you feel about these tips. Do you think they will increase your personal effectiveness? I eagerly await your response.

 

[Property Of God]

This is so beautiful Chad, I needed it and lately I'm feeling all that love towards others and I get too shy to help because I keep thinking I don't want to bother anyone or scare them.

With a little bit of love and patience from everyone, if everyone cared about others a little, this could be a great world.