What loving things? And wouldn’t I be a hypocrite for doing something I’m not feeling?
1) We are to do the four loving acts Jesus commanded in Luke 6:27-38. We are to do good deeds to our enemies, to bless them (say good things to them), pray for them (ask God to do His will in them) and give to them. These are the four most basic acts of love that we do to anyone.
2) If we obey the Lord even when we are not “feeling it,” far from being hypocritical, we are living by faith. When her great-grandson Jon told my mother that he did not “feel like going to church today,” she replied, “Oh, honey. If I only went to church when I felt like it, I would never go.”
The surest way to misery in this life is to order your life by your feelings. Feelings are volatile, undependable, irrational and dangerous. One of the best things the Lord’s children can do for themselves is to rescue their spiritual lives from bondage to their emotions.
Let us close with these Scriptures …
—“Walk in the Spirit and you will not fulfil the lust of the flesh” (Galatians 5:16).
—“In this the children of God and the children of the devil are manifest. Whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor is he who does not love his brother” (I John 3:10).
—“You are of God, little children, and have overcome (the forces of darkness), because He who is in you is greater than he who is in them” (I John 4:4).
—“Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God, and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. He who does not love does not know God” (I John 4:7-8).
Choose love. You will never regret it. Live out your hatred and you will regret it for the rest of your life—and then some.
