Leadership Thought: How Can I Know That I Love Like Jesus?

Dear Friends,

The other day in response to a Leadership Thought on loving our enemies, a friend asked the question: “Tom, can you honestly say you love everyone like Jesus?”

He then followed up his question with the first names of two people who had not been particularly supportive of me in a previous church many years ago, and I responded, "That's a tough question to answer. I'd like to say I love everyone, but if I define my love by the way Jesus loved people, I’d have to say I fall plenty short on the Jesus scale of love.

And then another reader shared an interesting definition of love. He said , “Love is acting in another’s highest interest.”

And as I read this definition, I realized I again fell short, for I know there are all too many times I have often put my own self interests ahead of others.

I realized I wasn’t doing very well on this Jesus kind of love thing; in fact, I ashamedly had to admit I was a complete failure.

Jesus loved everybody. He wasn’t choosey about whom he loved the way I sometimes am.  He helped everybody. He cared for everybody. Regardless of a person’s need, He would take the time to meet that need.

Unlike most of us, He was a no excuse kind of guy. If you had a need, He met that need.

Unfortunately, I am often too much like some of the people below who found ready excuses to ignore the needs of a man who fell into a pit and couldn’t get out.

A subjective person came along and said, "I feel for you down there."

An objective person came along and said, "Well, it's logical that someone would fall down there."

A Pharisee said, "Only bad people fall into pits."

A mathematician calculated how the individual fell into the pit.

A news reporter wanted an exclusive story on the person in the pit.

A fundamentalist said, "You deserve your pit."

A Calvinist said, if you had been saved, you would have never fallen into that pit. 

An Armenian said, "You were saved and still fell into the pit."

A charismatic said, "Just confess that you are not in that pit."

A realist came along and said, "Now, that's a pit." 

A geologist told him to appreciate the rock strata in the pit. 

An IRS worker asked if he was paying taxes on this pit. 

The county inspector asked if he had a permit to dig the pit.  

A self-pitying person said, " You haven't seen anything until you've seen my pit."

An  optimist said, "Things could be worse." 

A pessimist said, "Things will get worse." 

Jesus, seeing the man, reached out and took him by the hand and lifted him up out of the pit"  Encouragement Changes Everything, John Maxwell)

And if you and I do the same kind of ‘lifting,’ only then will we know that we love like Jesus.

Yours in faith and friendship,

Tom