From my own experience, just a tiny bit of pride can be such a hindrance to expressing love or truly living in the love of Christ. The love of Christ is the lifestyle of praying, helping and speaking in a sacrificial manner for the good of people. It is a lifestyle that always overcomes trials and always drives away darkness and pain. It is the solution to hate and changes the heart of those who are prideful in heart and refuse to acknowledge the source of their lives. It's only right to recognize the love of Christ as something greater than life itself. Out of many, there is one specific worldly attribute that I highly suggest you avoid in this lifestyle. In the experience of my pursuit of living and expressing this love, I've specifically had to keep caution and careful to not let the pain and trial that people give me, lead my heart to be just bitter. Bitterness always interferes with true love, godly love that is. Even in prayer, which is essential to the lives of many, bitterness will be a hindrance, preventing us to pray righteously about anything or for anyone.
Fun Unfortunate fact: There's a lot of people walking around bitter in NYC. It is utterly powerful to choose to be the opposite of that.
There was a time that I experienced bitterness towards certain people, and one of my good mentors said this in response to be exact:
"Boy stop smelling yourself so much, get over yourself, your way too young to be bitter and not expressing love to everyone!"
At that moment, the new age of enlightenment had arrived, at least in my life. I noticed the one weed still standing in the middle of nice trimmed grass. I noticed the one F grade in the midst of A's on the report card. I noticed the one black nasty dot on a beautiful colorful picture. It finally dawn on me that I still had a little pride in me interfering with my walk in God's love. The truth is, we must love any and everyone, if we want to love and please our creator. It isn't right to pick and choose who to love regardless of how unlovable people can be,
Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. - 1 John 4:7
You know when we eat meat and chicken, we only eat the meat and throw the bone away (the majority of us, I must say). I testify that this is the key to how we should treat trials and difficult people. We take in the benefits of these situations, which is changing lives by expressing love and following the path of our creator and we throw away the pain from harsh treatment, or any pain from any situation as if doesn't matter, as if it didn't happen. We render it useless. This gives more room to continue to treat people well regardless of how were treated. It gives more room to pray for people, and difficult situations effectively out of true love. This is the first step to living the life of Love. Best believe, a life that we are all called to live.
