Each and every one of us is called to love by God. In late March, the Creed of the Beloved that I introduced over ten years ago, received a small upgrade. I have spoken this Creed daily in my personal life, and as you know, we say it as a congregation on Sundays. For the last six years I have thought about how we can live out the final phrase of the Creed. It states, “I can trust my friend Jesus and share His love with the world.” That is true, we should love the world. At Hour of Power, we are a global ministry and we love the world.

However, as people, God actually doesn’t call Christians to love the world. He sends us into the world, but who does He call us to love? He calls us to love our neighbor. Sometimes it feels like it’s a lot harder to love your neighbor than it is to love the world. Especially when your neighbor is playing loud music until 2 a.m. and you’re trying to sleep. Many of us will agree that there is an academic type of love, that “loves humanity” but doesn’t actually like humans — I say this tongue-in-cheek, of course. So we acknowledge we do love the world in the sense that we are to love everyone without prejudice. We are also given the opportunity to love even our enemies. But to bring our opportunities to express our love closer to home, we updated the Creed to say “I can trust my friend Jesus and share His love with my neighbor.”

Friends, God wants you and I to love “our neighbor.” This means the people in the 15-feet of space around you. That includes your coworkers, the people in line with you at the store, or the person cutting you off in traffic. Loving your neighbor also means you love your spouse, your children, and your family. Of course, loving others is a lot more about who we become than it is about what we feel. Let’s continue to share and extend the goodness of God to our neighbors!