matthew on Loving Kindness

Heavenly Father, we have forgotten your generosity and kindness. Believing you hold back from us, we have held back from others and from you. Gracious God, hear our confessions, and make us mindful of...

Let me tell you the story of a great missionary named Frank C. Laubach (1884–1970). He grew up in the farming community of Benton, PA, and served as a Congregationalist missionary in the Philippines. ...

Gracious God, we come before you with humility, recognizing that doubt has led our decisions. We have allowed fear to lead, rather than love. Because of this, we have been unkind to our families, ou...

What does love look like? It has the hands to help others. It has the feet to hasten to the poor and needy. It has eyes to see misery and want. It has the ears to hear the sighs and sorrows of men. Th...

All-loving God, we confess our motivations are often not influenced by your love. We act according to what will bring us the best outcome. We love ourselves before we love you. Help us to grow deeper ...

Love your enemy-it will drive him nuts.

And we are put on earth a little space, That we may learn to bear the beams of love.

Gracious God, you have called us to be light in a dark world, and we have remained hidden. Thinking of ourselves first, we have withheld courage and compassion. Merciful God, hear our confessions and ...

You shall love your crooked neighbor with all your crooked heart.

Love may forgive all infirmities and love still in spite of them: but Love cannot cease to will their removal.

Here’s a testimony from Lisa Sharon Harper, author of The Very Good Gospel: Harper grew up as a child of a single mother. After her parents divorced, she and her mother moved from Philadelphia where ...

Father God, you see us; you have compassion; and you care for your greatest creation – people. You have also called us to notice, to listen, and to love others. Yet in our selfishness, we have ignored...

Leader: By grace, through Jesus, God calls us His children so that we might become more like Him, living as holy people who fear the Lord and serve one another in humility and love. When we honestly...

After C. S. Lewis lost his wife Joy to cancer, he wrote these words about the inextricable link between love, suffering, and vulnerability: To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your...

Gracious God, we come before you with humility, recognizing that doubt has led our decisions. We have allowed fear to lead, rather than love. Because of this, we have been unkind to our families, our ...

There is no remedy for love but to love more.

What I’ve come to realize is if I really want to “meet Jesus,” then I have to get a lot closer to the people He created. All of them, not just some of them.

It takes no grace to relate to someone who looks, thinks, and acts just like me . . . The more we love, and the more unlikely people we love, the more we resemble God — who, after all, loves ornery cr...

It is Christmas every time you let God love others through you.

Jesus said to love our enemies. I thought I’d get off easy because I don’t have any real “enemies.” I mean, I’m not mad at North Korea or Russia or China. And I don’t think they’re mad at me. After al...

We know but little now about the conditions of the life that is to come. But what is certain is that Love must last. God, the Eternal God, is Love. Covet, therefore, that everlasting gift.

The only clear line I draw these days is this: when my religion tries to come between me and my neighbor, I will choose my neighbor…Jesus never commanded me to love my religion.

I am persuaded that love and humility are the highest attainments in the school of Christ and the brightest evidences that He is indeed our Master.

The ways Jesus goes about loving and saving the world are personal: nothing disembodied, nothing abstract, nothing impersonal. Incarnate, flesh and blood, relational, particular and local. The ways em...

Fear Not! In the first Advent God keeps saying, “Fear not!” It’s a word we need to hear today too. Zechariah and Elizabeth were told that after decades of waiting they’d finally have a child in thei...

Gracious God, we desire to follow when you call. We long to live according to the ways of Jesus, yet we find ourselves stumbling. Forgive us for the times we have ignored your call to follow you in th...

Not long before his death, Martin Luther King Jr. spoke to the congregation at Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church: If any of you are around when I have to meet my day, I don’t want a long funeral. An...

“Love is what carries you, for it is always there, even in the dark, or most in the dark, but shining out at times like gold stitches in a piece of embroidery.”

We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to makes us love one another.

What I’m learning about love is that we have to tackle a good amount of fear to love people who are difficult. .