Thoughts from the Moderator – Stan Rodabaugh

Last year at a workshop with other pastors, I came away with a very helpful insight. It had to do with loving my neighbor. In our culture, the word “love” carries a lot of baggage, some of which we may find in our own hearts and spirits. Most of us feel love for people who reciprocate our love or appreciate our efforts to help them. Loving like Jesus and Father God love (what we know as “agape love”) is a much different kind of love.

The Lord has patterned for us that “loving my neighbor” means “gracing” my neighbor. So why does that make a difference for me? If I am gracing someone, my feelings toward them have nothing to do with how they have related to me or acted toward me. I simply treat them with dignity and kindness because they are God’s creation.

As a mother loves a newborn baby who can do nothing to warrant the attention and grace it receives, the mother simply “graces” the baby. A spiritually and mentally healthy mother delights in the baby just because it is. The baby may be quite a bother to the mother --diapers to be changed, night time feedings and crying to communicate his/her needs. Still, the mother delights to care for and truly loves the baby.

Our relationship with Father God and His son Jesus is very similar. Just as I John 4:10 says, “This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent His son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.” God has graced us. He has given us these lives, has provided a way that we can be safely with Him, and wants to transform us into his likeness so the fruit of the Spirit may be born in us. When we become aware of someone we honestly don’t like, I suggest we talk to Father God and the Lord Jesus Christ about our heart and our spirit. Ask for His help to think and feel about the person the way Jesus does. Ask to be able to grace this person the way Father God and the Lord Jesus grace us.

Maybe we can learn in our hearts and spirits to grace them just because they are God’s creation and thus precious! My suggestion: talk to the Lord about this and keep it in your mind as you search the Scriptures.