Don’t fake it! Get real! Make the choice to love!

• Loving people who are easy to love is simple. We all have our favourite mates and we love to do good things for them. I'm challenged by The Message translation’s take on Romans 12: 9-10, because the words are so hard-hitting: ‘Love from the center of who you are’. Wow! Do you do this? Do you love people with every ounce of love inside you? What has it cost you to love like this? Was it tough? What about those mates who are on the fringe of your circle of friends - do you love them like this too? And what of those who - to be honest - you can’t stand talking to. When you have bothered to talk to them, have you chosen to love them or did you ‘fake it’?
  
  
• In his letter to the Church in Rome, Paul challenges us to get real, stop faking and make the choice to love, even when we don’t feel like it. A lot of the time, love really is a choice. We can’t always feel love for everyone, but we can choose to show love sincerely, in our actions and words. It’s often by doing this that we discover new things about ourselves and we hear God speaking to us, stretching our character, challenging our thought processes, or bringing to mind things we need to say sorry for. It’s then that we actually find ourselves growing as Christians and develop mature character.
  
  
• Paul also tells us to run from evil things and hold on to good things for dear life! So, are there people in your life who are trying to take you down a road that you know - deep down - is evil. Perhaps it’s obvious, or maybe it’s really subtle and you need to stop and ask yourself “What’s really going on in my life at the moment? Why am I feeling like this? Why I am acting like this? Why does this person or this situation seem to have such a hold over me?” Make the choice to do the right thing and hang on to good for dear life! God will help you do this, if you let him! You might need to share some of this with a trusted friend or a mature leader. The choice to run for dear life though, will ultimately be yours.
  
  
• So, this week, as Revolutionaries of Hope, let’s also be Revolutionaries of Love. Let’s be people who - as Paul challenges - run from evil and are good friends who love deeply and who practice putting others before our own wants and needs. Playing ‘second fiddle’ [putting others first] is not easy. There’s no glamour in doing so, and you often don’t get what you want. You often lose out on getting to do amazing things and people may say unkind things about you. Yet, as Revolutionaries, we’re called to take the "rough with the smooth" and practise the hard parts of what it takes to be Christ-like: reacting to circumstances and doing everything we can in pure love.