Why is it sometimes difficult to love others? When a relative, close friend, or even a casual acquaintance wrongs us, we often are reluctant to respond in love and forgiveness. Love is more than a feeling or emotion. It is a decision about how we treat one another. We only need to look to Jesus as our model of how to love. Jesus personified God’s love, but He also said, “I am the truth” (John 14:6). The Holy Spirit pours God’s love into our heart (Romans 5:5) but is also the Spirit of truth (John 15:26). Truth becomes hard if it is not softened by love; Love becomes soft if it is not strengthened by truth.
In Psalm 66:13-20 the psalmist voices his love for and praise to God as he declared how God had delivered the children of Israel by parting the sea (v.6). And in v.20 he states, ‘Blessed be God, which hath not turned away my prayer, nor His mercy from me.’ Our love for God and others is a response to His love for you and me. We love Him because He first loved us. However, there is one thing that can block the experience of God’s love. In v.18 we read, ‘If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me.’ If there is past sin, we can confess it and be forgiven. We cannot come into God’s presence with a clear conscience if we deliberately plan to sin in the future.
Nothing is more of a hindrance to the message of Jesus than a lack of love between Christians. If our world is to be changed where people are going to turn back to following Jesus, we must start loving one another. Love unites and attracts others to Jesus. Loving God and loving one another in Jesus’ name must be our overall ambition above all others. The words of the 3rd and 4th verses of a favorite hymn, “When I Survey the Wondrous Cross”, is the ultimate demonstration of Christ’s love for us and ‘demands my soul, my life, my all’. 

“See from His head, His hands, His feet, 
  Sorrow and love flow mingled down!
  Did e’er such love and sorrow meet,
  Or thorns compose so rich a crown?
  
  Were the whole realm of nature mine,
  That were a present far too small;
  Love so amazing, so divine,
  Demands my soul, my life, my all.”