251. GOD WILL NOT SEND YOU A MAN TO LOVE IF YOU DO NOT LOVE THE BRETHREN

(The Single Woman Series – Batch 4)

Many a Christian lady have been praying to God, some for years, to send them a spouse to love them.

HOWEVER, if you read the five (5) chapters of 1 John in the Bible and you allow the Holy Spirit to truly speak, many of you will realize the truth: God is not going to send you a brother in the Lord to love you, if you don’t love the brethren. (Aha moment!)

In those five (5) chapters, 1 John commands us AT LEAST TEN (10) TIMES, to love those who are in the household of faith and unconditionally, meaning no matter how they treat us, what they think of us, if they hate us or what they have done to us. Whatever they have done to us, that is for God to handle, not us. Our responsibility is to keep on loving them and not with mere words but in spirit and truth.

When we gossip, badmouth, become envious, jealous, competitive and refuse to forgive, when we are malicious, unkind, indifferent and unfeeling to the plight of our brothers and sisters or dislike any one of them for whatever reason and openly or secretly rejoice when they fall or are happy to hear when they are going through some hardship in life, then we are HATING on God’s children. When we are sad when God chooses to bless them and upset when we get good news about them, then we are HATING on God’s children.

If we truly LOVED them, then we would do as Romans 12:15 states: “Rejoice with them that do rejoice, and weep with them that weep.”

If we hate any member of God’s family, don’t expect him to send us another member in the form of one of his precious sons, to love us and for us to love, in marriage. IT WILL NOT HAPPEN. It doesn’t work that way. God is NOT mocked. He takes your hating on any member of his family, personally, so if you resolve to continue hating or disliking any of his children, don’t expect him to give you one of his sons to love.

Practise loving your sisters and brothers in the Lord, no matter how difficult BECAUSE GOD COMMANDS IT. You never know what blessings he may have in store when you practise OBEDIENCE.

(Written on 9th August, 2018)

ADDENDUM

Many times, the Lord challenges and ministers to me by the very truths that he has me write and admittedly, what I have written above, has been and is a challenge to me. For, while it is easy to love people generally in the household of faith, there are some people that I’ve come across over the years in the body of Christ with ways, attitudes and skewed philosophies on life that I abhor (like pride, self-righteousness, cliquishness, love of attention, self-importance, love of public praise and self-glorification).

There are also those brothers and sisters who, no matter what you do, just don’t like you, consider you to be a nothing, still badmouth you, still try to hurt, insult, harass, provoke and undermine you. There are those that rejoice in their hearts when you are seemingly in a predicament. Such people delight maliciously in what you are going through or what they hear you are going through (which they quickly believe and hope that you are going through) and they do it for entertainment purposes or due to their chronic love of gossip or because of unforgiveness in the heart or because they feel the need to suppress you and keep you down in life, due to envy, competitiveness, ‘turfishness’, cliquishness and the desire that they and their loved ones be the only ones that ‘shine’.

Believe it or not, there are such people in many, if not all Churches today.

When it comes to such people, I have found it hard to do what God’s Word says but I MUST. For, such people have professed to know Christ and if they are genuine Christians, this means that, despite their behaviour, even if they don’t repent for their wrong, they are my brothers and sisters. I have therefore been asking God to help me love more and unconditionally, so that I would not hold on to any bitterness, resentment or unforgiveness, when it comes to such people.

It is easy to love the Christian that is peaceful, spiritually mature and that you know genuinely loves you but difficult to love the one that displays spiritual immaturity by being meddlesome, drama-loving, troublemaking, malicious, pride-filled, contentious, self-righteous, self-important, that considers you to be a write-off, not on his or her ‘level’ or that loves a good gossip.

YET, the Lord has been challenging me in this area. For, he still requires obedience. I must have a love that is so much and so fervent, that it overflows and covers the multitude of sins. I must not hold grudges but show mercy, even where I received none.

This morning in my devotions, the following verses in Leviticus 19:16-18 were quite apt and timely. In those verses, love was again the theme. God told Moses to tell the Israelites that he was holy and therefore, that they should be too. In this regard, in addition to other holy commands, he told them:

• “Thou shalt not go up and down as a talebearer among thy people: neither shalt thou stand against the blood of thy neighbour; I am the Lord. Thou shalt not hate thy brother in thine heart: thou shalt in any wise rebuke thy neighbour, and not suffer sin upon him. Thou shalt not avenge, nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people, but thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself: I am the Lord.”

God identified no conditions for this love. He did not say to love your brothers and sisters if they treat you good or if they like you. He commanded the Israelites that they were to love their brethren, irrespective of how those brethren treated them, without retaliating or avenging. Vengeance is and will always be the Lord’s to repay.

This command on loving the brethren and unconditionally, has been given afresh in the New Testament and is therefore applicable to the Church today. In Romans 13:8-15 for example, it tells Christians:

• “Owe no man any thing, but to love one another: for he that loveth another hath fulfilled the law. For this, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not kill, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false witness, Thou shalt not covet; and if there be any other commandment, it is briefly comprehended in this saying, namely, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. Love worketh no ill to his neighbour: therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.”

Our Father in heaven, in light of your Word which is true, please forgive me of my shortcomings and let your love be shed abroad in my heart. Help me to love every professer of Jesus Christ and even the ungodly. Help me to love without conditions, even where I’ve not been treated right by some of my brothers and sisters in the faith. Help me to love, even as Jesus Christ loved, fervently. I understand that loving in this way means that I will get hurt. When it comes to loving as Jesus loved, being hurt is unavoidable. Nevertheless, help me to obey you in this regard, in Jesus’ name I ask this of necessity, Amen.

(Addendum written on 15th August, 2021)

Dear Reader, if you found the above Article to be eye-opening, informative, edifying or beneficial, you may also be interested in reading the following:

• Note 57 – ‘Comparison and Competition’
• Note 187 – ‘Could It Be That You Don’t Like Her Because…’
• Note 257 – ‘How Envy and Jealousy Blinds’
• Note 164 – ‘Seven (7) Mindsets That Will Keep You Stuck In The Land Of Sterility’
• Note 224 – ‘Symptoms Of A Person Outside The Favour Of God’