We come before You today with humble and honest hearts — acknowledging that we do not always love well. We love conditionally when You love unconditionally. We love those who are easy to love and keep our distance from those who are not. We love when it is convenient and pull back when it costs us something. And yet You have called us to something so much higher, so much deeper, so much more radical than what comes naturally to us. You have called us to love like Jesus. Lord, we cannot do that on our own. Teach us.
Your Son set the standard and it is breathtaking in its scope. “A new command I give you: love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another” (John 13:34). As You have loved us — that is the measure, Lord. Not as the world loves, which is selective and self-serving. But as Jesus loves — sacrificially, relentlessly, without condition and without end. That kind of love does not come from human effort or good intentions. It can only come from You. Fill us with it today.
Father, show us what love like Jesus actually looks like in the ordinary moments of our lives. It looks like patience with the person who tries us. It looks like kindness offered to someone who has not earned it. It looks like choosing humility when pride wants to win the argument. It looks like bearing with one another, forgiving one another, “just as in Christ God forgave us” (Ephesians 4:32). Your Word paints love not as a feeling to be waited on but as a choice to be made — again and again and again.
Lord, Jesus did not love from a safe distance. He moved toward people. He touched the untouchable, welcomed the outcast, sat with the sinner, and wept with the grieving. He saw the crowds and was “moved with compassion” (Matthew 9:36) — not inconvenienced by them, not overwhelmed by them, but moved. Give us that same compassion, Lord. Move us toward the people around us who are hurting and lonely and invisible. Help us to see them the way Jesus sees them — as deeply loved and infinitely worthy of our time, our attention, and our care.
Father, loving like Jesus means loving those who are difficult to love — and we confess that is where we fall short most often. But Your Word does not offer us an exemption. “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you” (Luke 6:27–28). That is not a suggestion, Lord — it is a command. And it is only possible because of what You have done in us. Remind us that the most powerful witness we carry is not our theology but our love — “by this everyone will know that you are My disciples, if you love one another” (John 13:35).
Pour out Your love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit (Romans 5:5), Lord — because we cannot manufacture it ourselves. Let it overflow from us into every relationship we carry, every room we enter, every life we touch. May we be people who are marked not by how much we know but by how deeply we love. And may that love point everyone around us back to the One who loved us first, who loves us still, and who loved us enough to lay down His life so that we might truly live.
Teach us, Lord. We are willing students. Love through us what we cannot love on our own.
