Mark 12:31 (NIV) The second is this: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no commandment greater than these."

Going to church and Christian meetings, reading and studying our Bible and Christian literature, praying and listening to God, listening to Christian music and sermons were our major way of increasing our love relationship with God. Now we add the dimension of building a love relationship with others. This aspect of love becomes a physical way of showing God how much we love Him.

Mat 7:12 (NIV) So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.

Mat 22:37-40 (NIV) Jesus replied: "'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. 'This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments."

Matthew 7:12 is given the same weight as the greatest and second greatest commandments. That is an amazing fact. Why would Jesus put doing to others what we would want them doing to us in the same category as loving God with all we are? Because everything we do or don't do to them is what we do or don't do to God.

All this relationship we have been building with God ultimately dies if it doesn't manifest itself through us into the lives of others.

The wonderful thing is, we can count on the fact that a true love for God will show up in our relationships with others. Will this happen because we have become such loving and wonderful people? No. It will happen because we have put our complete trust in God.

2 Cor 9:8 (NIV) And God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that in all things at all times, having all that you need, you WILL abound in every good work.

We will never arrive at the place where we will do what God requires. It will remain God's undeserved favor (grace). We love God with all our being because of His grace. His Holy Spirit is producing that love in and through us toward God. We will love our neighbor as our self by means of that same grace through the same Holy Spirit.

Rom 5:5 (NIV) And hope does not disappoint us, because God HAS poured out HIS love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, Whom He HAS given us.

Here we are faced with the fact that we must aim God's love at these people. This too must happen through a cooperative work with God. Once again, God is gentle. He isn't going to force us to love Him; and, He isn't going to force us to love others. The fact that we didn't need to be forced to love Him is our evidence that we are able to love others. However, loving others is a whole different issue from loving God.

God loves back in a far greater manifestation of love than we give to Him. God deserves our love. God blesses, meets our needs, fills us with His presence, protects, and transforms us. People don't have any of that to offer. They often hate us, mistreat us, reject us, ignore us, sin against us, and refuse to love us back. How in the world are we going to love them? Yes, we have God's love installed in our heart by the Holy Spirit. Having love and giving love are two different things, though. God and the things of God only make things possible for us. They don't automatically make things happen in us. WE CAN ALWAYS RESIST THEM, IF WE WANT TO. God's love is like that. We CAN love people; but, we don't HAVE TO. So, how do we love people with the love God has put in our heart?