People

I don’t know how many of you are excited for the year. People have mixed feelings at the beginning of the year. Some are excited for the chance to do it all over again. Others are exhausted just at the thought of having to face another 365 days full of work and well… dealing with people, lol.

People can be difficult. Be it family, co-workers, clients or whatever the case may be. But, at the same time, people are God’s passion. God loves people and He has chosen us to reflect that love to His people. Knowing humans, it doesn’t sound like a good plan hey?

Last week we looked at being transformed into Christ likeness. 2 Corinthians 3:16 says, “But the moment one turns to the Lord with an open heart, the veil is lifted and they see.” What do they see? We see Jesus for who He really is.

From when we are born, the devil works hard at feeding us lies about who God is. If you think God is mean and does not have your back, why would you want to turn to Him and be vulnerable with Him? Why would you trust Him with your pain and the things you hide deep inside your soul? Why would you want to draw near to Him or be more like Him? But once you know just how loving and full of light He is, you desperately want to be near Him because you know that life without Him has no meaning. You want to bask in His love for you. The beautiful thing is that the more familiar you are with His love, the more you are able to love those around you.

In our own strength it is impossible to truly love people, but with God all things are possible (Matthew 19:26). So, we need to shift the focus off ourselves in 2025 and put it on God if we are going to love God and His people. We need to see God for who He truly is. When this happens, we are more willing to embark on the journey of transformation so we can be more like Him. If we truly want to be more like Jesus, we are going to need to spend some time with Him in our every day lives.

I grew up with my parents. I spent a lot of time with them. Now as an adult I see myself doing certain things the way my mom would do them or saying things my dad would say. If I’m in a situation, I know how they are likely to respond, why? Because I know them. Likewise with Jesus. If we want to know how God wants us to treat the people we encounter in our everyday, we need to spend some time with Him. We need to be willing to let God help us get rid of our bad attitudes, our opinions and prejudices towards people, our fear to step outside of what is comfortable and our discontentment with being inconvenienced. 

It is not always going to be comfortable or easy or convenient to show people the love of Christ, so we are going to need all the help we can get. Thank You, Holy Spirit! So, how do we love people? We all know it’s not easy to love the people who hurt us or the Karens of this world (sorry if your name is Karen, I use that term figuratively) but we gotta do it.

1 John 4:7-8 says, “Those who are loved by God, let his love continually pour from you to one another, because God is love. Everyone who loves is fathered by God and experiences an intimate knowledge of him. The one who doesn’t love has yet to know God, for God is love.”

So if we want to be able to love people, we have to first allow ourselves to be loved by God, and as we do so, we get an intimate knowledge of Him and out of that relationship flows our love to others. We are going to be talking about how we practically do this over the next few weeks. 

Until then, have a wonderful week!

Love and blessings,

Melissa Tsingano.