Love Your Neighbour. No discrimination.

 Honour your father and mother,’ and ‘love your neighbour as yourself.’” Mt 19:19 NIV

Love your neighbour as yourself.
In practice, this involves much more than acts of kindness by one person to another.

If you are a man, every man and every woman is your neighbour. 

If you love yourself with a healthy God given self-respect, you will recognise your gifts and talents and make the most of them to realise your potential.

If you love your neighbour as yourself, you will love women in the same way as you love men, and I am not talking about romantic or sexual love.

Just as you make the most of your own gifts and talents, you will seek to give everyone of both genders the maximum opportunity to realise their potential.

I love classical music. The most celebrated classical composers are all men, but there have been amazingly gifted female composers who have not been allowed to reach their full potential.
Felix Mendelssohn wrote the most popular wedding music of all time. 

He was one of the greats, but his sister Fanny was equally talented. Why could she not devote herself fully to becoming one of the celebrated great composers? Because she was a woman. She was expected to marry and devote herself to serving her husband.

My grandmother was an amazingly talented woman. Her father was an engineer and a university lecturer with a personal library of wonderful books. She learned to read at home and taught her sisters to read. 

She only attended school for one year, but she became an art teacher and a lecturer at a training college for kindergarten teachers. She was an excellent artist herself and she wrote a textbook for teaching art to small children. She also raised four sons. One became a farmer, another became a professor of law and my father became a psychiatrist.

How terrible it would have been if she had been forced into a traditional role as housewife with no outlets for her talents.

What is your Calling?

 Many years ago I heard a guest preacher. He was a missionary and he challenged the Christians to come forward to lay down their lives for missions. At least twenty Christians came forward, but no one became a missionary.

What is your calling? Have you asked God?
If you have a God-given purpose, are you practically involved in fulfilling that calling?

There are some Christians who are fully committed to fulfilling their calling. Without these Christians, God's kingdom on earth would perish. Thank God that will never happen.

But we must never sit in a cosy corner and leave all the responsibility for God's kingdom to a few heroes. Unfortunately, there are too many such passive Christians. That's why we're not seeing revival yet.

Most Christians are not called to lead a church or preach from the pulpit. Unfortunately, we have a misguided tradition where everything revolves around the pastor in the pulpit. Preaching has no value if Christians are not activated as dynamic disciples.

What is your calling? What does your heart burn for?

But perhaps you are overburdened by everyday duties and tasks.

Peter, John and their brothers had to leave their work as fishermen to fulfil their calling, but most of us are not called to do this.

Paul was more than full time in ministry, but he often worked as a tent maker as well.

Luke was not a prominent preacher, but he was well educated. He researched the stories of Jesus and wrote the Gospel of Luke.

You have talents and abilities from God. You have an important role in God's plan, but you can only fulfil your potential if you take time to develop your gifts.

Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might, for in the realm of the dead, where you are going, there is neither working nor planning nor knowledge nor wisdom. Ecc 9:10 NIV

Do you feel obliged to always satisfy the wishes of others?

If you strive to always fulfil the expectations of others, you will always be tired and frustrated, and never reach God's goal for your life.

Seek the LORD while he may be found; call on him while he is near. Is 55:6 NIV

Whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you, saying, “This is the way; walk in it.” Isa 30:21 NIV

It is rare to hear the audible voice of God, but if you are open to the leading of God, He will direct you.

If you always fulfil the wishes of others, you will always turn away from God's purpose for your life, even if you always behave properly.

Another disciple said to him, “Lord, first let me go and bury my father.”
But Jesus told him, “Follow me, and let the dead bury their own dead.” Mt 8:21–22 NIV

Jesus did not mean that we should not attend funerals, but he insists that God's calling must be our first priority.

Two Ways to Receive from God

 To rest in the Lord and get the things done: both are important. Wisdom is to find out, when it's time for which one. (Sarah Fischer, Swiss preacher)

God has ways of giving, and so there are two ways of receiving from God. Some of God's gifts require serious effort on our part to appropriate.

Great musicians like Bach and Handel had amazing musical gifts, but they worked incredibly hard to develop their gifts. Some of God's miracles can only come through intense, repeated or prolonged prayer and sometimes also fasting.

Other times, God just gives you a present that falls in your lap because you are his child and he loves you.

So I say to you, Ask and keep on asking, and it shall be given you; seek and keep on seeking, and you shall find; knock and keep on knocking, and the door shall be opened to you.

For everyone who asks and keeps on asking receives; and he who seeks and keeps on seeking finds; and to him who knocks and keeps on knocking, the door shall be opened. Luke 11:9-10 (AMP)

If God wants you to reach out and extend yourself to appropriate His gift, you will miss out if you just sit and wait for it to happen. On the other hand, if God just wants to drop a blessing on you as a present, you can miss out by fasting and praying or working hard. I believe he is right.

We can limit God by expecting Him to give no more than we pray, work, expect and proclaim. God loves to surprise His children with little blessings but also sometimes overwhelming great gifts.

Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, Eph 3:20 NIV

In my youth I studied German as a foreign language and I worked very hard at it. Over the years, God has used me to minister to German-speaking people. I preach, prophesy and blog in German.

Writing a blog in my second language involves serious work. I often refer to a dictionary to find just the right word. Writing in English is easier. It also took me some time to become proficient in typing in German on my computer, and I still type faster in English.

But sometimes I just get a German message that flows into me and through me to others. I had a German colleague in my workplace in Australia. When she left our workplace, I sat down and wrote a lovely poem for her in German. It was so easy.

"Which of you fathers, if your son asks for a fish, will give him a snake instead?
Or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion?

If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!" Luke 11:1-13 NIV

 If you are married, you will know that marriage is not easy. It requires work, sacrifice and patience. But if you have a good marriage, you will find that it is often easy and delightful to give and receive loving gifts. So it is with our relationship with God. 

Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow of turning. James 1:17 NKJV