Hard Love | Short Sermon Series

1. Choosing love brings greater joy

Ever wanted to just escape to avoid facing someone? Surely all of us have. Even if you don’t feel that way, choosing to love someone who is hard to love actually brings you greater joy.

Imagine choosing to make breakfast for your parents (who you don’t have a good relationship with) before you leave the house. Even though the effort might be half-hearted, your parents still finished the meal and send you a picture of an empty plate (which you wouldn’t even want to finish) to express their thanks. The sense of joy you get can't even be compared to the satisfaction of finishing your favourite K-Drama.

2. Choosing love brings freedom

It’s easy to focus on how unfair a situation seems and hold onto grudge to ‘prove’ that you’re the ‘victim’. But that is a self-centred and narrow minded way of thinking. Instead of holding onto negative thoughts, we should instead invite God’s love into the situation. When we find ourselves focusing on our pain, remind yourself to thank God for showing His love to us. Then ask ourselves “how can I show God’s love in this situation?” Slowly, we’ll be free from focusing on ourselves and hurting others, and we will start doing small acts of love!

3. Choosing love brings breakthroughs

Only God can pull us out of the dark places we’re in, where breakthroughs come after we’ve left those dark places. But as we slowly emerge from where we were, God is still working and we can continue to love others. We’re called to love others and we’re able to do so today because God so loved us and let Jesus die on the cross for us. And through this love, we now have the God of breakthroughs with us.

Choosing to love may be difficult, but its not impossible. After all, God chose to love us in all our un-lovable-ness, and He can give us the strength to choose love too.