loving your neighbor on Comfort Zone

Neither the hair shirt nor the soft berth will do. The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet.

If you never left your home and avoided all interaction with other people, you couldn’t be characterized as a loving person. Instead, you might even be unloving because of your lack of concern for oth...

[I]f we have compassion without capacity, we have human frustration. If we have capacity without compassion, we have human alienation. If we have compassion and capacity, we have human transformation....

It is in deep solitude that I find the gentleness with which I can truly love my brothers. The more solitary I am, the more affection I have for them. It is pure affection, and filled with reverance f...

Our God, we have been slow to stand and slow to act. We have been unmoved in the face of wrongs. Rather than welcoming others, we have put up walls. We have served this god of self-preservation. But y...

He who loves his dream of community more than the Christian community itself becomes a destroyer of the latter, even though his personal intentions may be ever so honest and earnest and sacrificial.

When I get on stage, my first goal is not to show my expertise, but on the contrary, to give a bit of happiness, of joy, of cheerfulness. I am firmly convinced that in order to sing well, you must lov...

Holy God, we have not lived in the light. We have not walked as Jesus did. We compromise all too often, living both for you and for ourselves. Your word calls us to account and your Holy Spirit convic...

Compassion is born when we discover in the center of our own existence not only that God is God and man is man, but also that our neighbor is really our fellow man.

The Christian life is not a life dripping with personal satisfaction or one of basking in feeling “positive.” It isn’t a life baptized in stimulation or excitement. It definitely isn’t a life of conse...

Do not waste time bothering whether you “love” your neighbor; act as if you did. As soon as we do this we find one of the great secrets. When you are behaving as if you loved someone, you will present...

Love thy neighbor as thyself, but choose your neighborhood. *for contrast

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.

If I’m only willing to love the people who are nice to me, the ones who see things the way I do, and avoid all the rest, it’s like reading every other page of the Bible and thinking I know what it say...

When we look for what's best in the person we happen to be with at the moment, we're doing what God does, so in appreciating our neighbor, we're participating in something truly sacred.

Preaching Commentary A Christmastide Community A recent podcast reminded me that there is no such thing as a “neutral” marking of our time—our minutes and our hours, our days and our weeks, our mon...

Q: "Are you a Christian?" A: "Ask my neighbor."

Gracious Father, too often we base our worth on our performance. We believe if we do well, your love grows, and if we falter, your love lessens. Our God, how far this is from the truth. We confess our...

Spread love everywhere you go. Let no one ever come to you without leaving happier.

Generous Lord Jesus We confess that we do not receive others with compassion. We object to being interrupted And respond with anger or frustration. We confess that we do not share generously Not trus...

Yet, while Your love is consistent, eternal and strong, Our love is fickle, finite and easily swayed. So, we confess today that we have not loved You as You deserve, with our whole selves – heart, min...

Our love to God is measured by our everyday fellowship with others and the love it displays.

Heavenly Father, You and Your Gifts are Perfect. We are not. You lead us with abundant mercy, justice, and grace. We are slow to follow. We abandon the straight and narrow path of life in which You di...

Each of us, Lord, has failed to fully observe your beauty. We fall in love with our own image and are left disappointed and alone. Please be faithful to us, Jesus, even when we turn from You. We...

O God who will not let us go, we confess that we have been so wrapped up in ourselves that have not loved You with our whole hearts, and we have not loved our neighbors as we love ourselves. By Your g...

Gracious God, in Christ Jesus, you teach us to love our neighbors but instead we build dividing walls of hostility. You show us how to love one another as sisters and brothers but instead we hide from...

Learning how to love your neighbor requires a willingness to draw on the strength of Jesus Christ as you die to self and live for Him. Living in this manner allows you to practice biblical love for ot...

We do not love our neighbor for affirmation, but because we have been loved first. Now is not the time to withdraw, but to refine our intentions and pursue public faithfulness.

Being salt and light demands two things: we practice purity in the midst of a fallen world and yet we live in proximity to this fallen world. If you don't hold up both truth in tension, you invari...

Ought we not to love dearly the neighbor, who truly represents to us the sacred Person of our Master? And is this not one of the most powerful motives we could have for loving each other with an arden...