Justine Jacobs

Dear friends, If God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 1 John 4:11

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The simple truth stated in 1 John is one that Be The Church has tried to adopted as its core mission. But as always, it’s easier said than done. It begs the question, what is love? What does love for others look like? How could I ever, even for a moment, love others the way God loves me? At times we see glimpses of this love through the kindness of those around us. Communities coming together following a natural disaster, outpouring of support to a family in need, the care a parent gives to their child. Though love is not always displayed as a grand gesture, it is almost always intentional. Thinking back, I can’t remember ever feeling accidentally loved by the people around me. When we show love, especially the kind of love that God calls us to, we do so with intentionality. We love our spouse intentionally, we raise our children intentionally, we better our communities intentionally. Self-serving desires are easy to default to, its loving others that takes work.

Bearing that truth in mind, Be The Church is promoting Kindness Month throughout August. Our goal is simple. We hope to encourage our church body to be intentional about showing kindness to the world around us. These acts of kindness can be small or large, but it is unlikely they will be ignored. In a cultural climate where voices of empathy and love are very rarely the loudest in the room, true kindness shines so that people take notice. How often has God sustained you through the acts or words of those around you? Will we allow him to work through us for the betterment of others? If God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. Throughout the month if you participate in purposeful acts of kindness, please let us know. Email bethechurch@fellowshipsj.org so we can share these experiences to inspire others.
To engage our church body Kindness Month, we invite you to participate in our Night of Prayer on Friday August 9th. We will be coming together to pursue an act of kindness that we can all participate in, prayer. When we think of the hurting and pain in the world today, one question we could ask ourselves is “Have you prayed about it as much as you have talked about it?” The answer for me is almost always “no”. If you can relate to that, I am sure you will benefit from this time with the Lord. We will be taking time to pray together over various topics and worshiping our God, it should be refreshing time in community together. Remember, kindness doesn’t have to be “hard”, but the skills we don’t practice we begin to lose. This August, lets practice loving each other as God has loved us.