1 John 4:7

Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.

Love is popular in today’s age, but it’s not widely practiced. It’s popular to advocate for a movement on Facebook, to ask for donations on GoFundMe, to be a good person…

But it’s also popular to beep your horn in traffic. It’s popular to gossip behind your co-worker’s back at work. It’s popular to complain about taxes and mortgages. It’s even popular to move on from your spouse.

Our world claims to love, but it doesn’t live out love in everyday life. As a Christian, I think we’re called to something better. We have the opportunity to love people at their worst.

See God offered us mercy at our worst; therefore, we are to offer mercy to others.

1 John 2:6

The one who says He abides in me ought himself to walk in the same manner as He walked.

We see our own failures, and it should humble us. As messed up as we are, God loves us. Those we work with and encounter each day are just as messed up. They will fail us. Sometimes, they’ll come across rude and indifferent. That doesn’t change the likeness we are to emulate towards them. It only enhances the character that is to define us.

But we don’t always emulate Jesus. We also emulate the world. We fail to show love, so our actions fail to reflect the hope inside us. They can’t see Him in us, if we aren’t living as He did.

Ray Stedman stated it this way:

The Christian faith has always emphasized preeminently two very important things — truth and love. Jesus Christ himself was the preeminent expression of both of these — truth and love — held in perfect balance. He was fully the expression of truth, and fully the expression of love. Therefore Christianity, which is but the expression of his life in the world, is, to use that wonderful expression of the Apostle Paul, to be an experience of “truthing in love.” That is the literal rendering of the phrase which Paul uses in Ephesians, translated in our Authorized Version, “speaking the truth in love,” (Ephesians 4:15 KJV). Literally it is “truthing in love,” living the truth in love. This is what Christianity is to be.

Live the truth. Never be afraid to share it, but always live it out with immense love and compassion. God offered you His compassion. When you see the failures and mistakes in others’ lives, offer love to them. I can’t think of any greater replication of our Father.