LoveHonestly

Better to open rebuke than love that is concealed. Faithful are the wounds of a friend, But deceitful are the kisses of an enemy.

Proverbs 27: 5-6

Christians have gotten love wrong..face it,we have. We have not loved people the way they should be loved and many of those people have left the church or never considered giving it a chance because of our inaccurate manner of carrying out God’s plan for love.

There is a popular belief that to love someone you have to accept everything about them, whatever it may be. Many Christians fall victim to this line of thinking...but it's a false doctrine. That isn’t the only problem, we have also refused to love people because of their particular sin, their race or even their gender.

Christianity isn't about being nice, it should be a byproduct, but what it's really about is accepting the fact that we are all horribly flawed and without Jesus, we are lost. 

In Matthew 22 Jesus instructed us how to love when He said,

“‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ 38 This is the first and great commandment. 39 And the second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’

Not only have we have missed the mark when it comes to loving the Lord, but in many occasions when it comes to loving our neighbor.

Dr. Martin Luther King once said,

“it is appalling that the most segregated hour of Christian America is eleven o’clock on Sunday morning.”

Dr. King was pointing out that even though we carry the same beliefs we do not live in a manner that accurately depicts how Heaven will look.

It's not love to ignore certain parts of the Bible just so you don't hurt someone's feelings. Not addressing it is not love, that is apathy, and apathy is not love. It is also not love to distort certain parts of the Bible so that it meets your specific feeling, desire, or goal.

After we accept Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior, we are supposed to be changed. We are supposed to turn against sin. 

Proverbs 28:13 says...

“People who conceal their sins will not prosper, but if they confess and turn from them, they will receive mercy.”

In John 8, when Jesus stopped a woman, assumed to be Mary Magdalene, from being stoned to death, he told her...

“Neither do I condemn you; go and sin no more.”

He didn't say, go now and don't get caught again, or go now and keep on trucking. No, He said "go now and sin no more."

We all sin, but as Christians we are supposed to turn against it, and we are also supposed to encourage others to turn against their own sin. So much is said about removing the plank from our own eye and this is used to discourage Christians to address the sin of our brothers and sisters, however, Jesus instructs us to remove the plank from our own eye so that we can better see the speck in our brother’s eye. He never says to forget about your brothers speck.

LoveHonestly is about fulfilling the Great Commandment by loving people honestly by treating them with the love and respect they deserve, addressing the difficult things, not being apathetic to them, and about showing people grace, because we all fall short of the standard set by Jesus.