Luke 6:27-36

So as a New Year's resolution of sorts, I have really been feeling called to read the whole Bible this year. I had my lesson for youth group on Sunday planned for a while and it was really neat how God decided to bring together my lesson and one of the early readings in my yearly plan. In youth group, I talked about examples of extreme faith and how we are called to live a life that often doesn't make sense to the world we are living in.

I got the inspiration to share this when I read a quote in Francis Chan's book Crazy Love. Chan writes, "Something is wrong if our life makes sense to unbelievers." Wow, talk about convicting. I've been thinking about this a whole lot lately and enjoyed sharing it with my high school students last night. We talked about God calling Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac and how crazy that must have seemed. Then we talked about Noah and how people thought he was a lunatic for building a huge boat to protect himself from some alleged flood. But despite the outlandish situations they found themselves in, both of these men were faithful to their calling.
And because they took these crazy steps of faith, God blessed them in amazing ways.

This brings me to the reading in Luke this morning. It was the section about loving your enemies. Jesus teaches: "If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even 'sinners' love those who love them. And if you do good to you, what credit is that to you? Even 'sinners' do that."

Jesus has a way of putting things so simply, yet so powerfully. This passage really convicted me today because honestly, if I'm just serving and loving those who are grateful for it, and those who are going to return the love, big deal. If we want to give God the credit he deserves, we need to show his love to those who may not want it or return it. And that's my little thought for the day.