When it comes to passing on life with God to others, if there’s no internal motivation then it won’t happen. For example, passion for God comes and goes. Passion is often stirred up by external factors. A great example is the “foxhole conversion” of a soldier in desperate trouble. Often, soon after his passionate cry to God for help and the crisis subsides, he’s back to life without God.

When we lose our passion of the moment, we not only lose our desire for God but we also may lose our desire to help others experience life the way Jesus intended. There has to be something more that grips our inner being if we’re going to help others follow Christ too.

The phrase - God loves you - is thrown around a lot. Has it become just another plastic, buzz phrase that’s out there and used by religious people? What does it really mean to love. In one sense, as followers of Christ, we’re all learning how to love people -not because we want everyone to be the same and not because we want something from them. But, as Christians, living life to the full is to experience all that God has for us including learning to love people who may not see things the we do or who may even not like us for one reason or another.

For example, what about loving people with different beliefs, with a different view of God, with a different view of the world, with a different view of how to live life to the full - even? Doesn’t God want us to love everyone? Jesus said, By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another. (The Gospel of John 13:35) After doing that, where do we go from there?