New Year, Same Journey

We lay on the red turkish carpet and maroon cushions watching the sweet sheesha smoke dance and swirl under the dim glow of warm orange lights, feeling the bossa nova beats vibrate through the wooden floorboards, sipping ice cold drinks, and discussing how to love another person in Christ.

• Q: What does it mean to love another person in Christ?
• Q: In practical terms, how do you love another person in Christ?
• Q: We evangelicals would deny that love is just a feeling. But if love is merely a cold commitment, is this mere legalistic adherence to the law?
  
• Q: Whom should you love (Christians or non-Christians or both?) and are there supposed to be different degrees of love depending on the depth of the relationship?
• Q: Depending on what definition of loving another in Christ means, how can there be different degrees of love?
  
• Q: Should you strategise to get a DG to love each other or should this be a natural outflow of their love for God and good bible teaching?
• Q: How do you maintain good close relationships with a few people so that you are comfortable enough to be accountable to each other, YET be open and welcoming enough so as not to exclude others?
• Q: How do you maintain a good one-to-one relationship but guard against the opportunities for sin such a close relationship presents?
• Q: How should we encourage each other to love one another (horizontal) as an overflow from the vertical relationship we have with God?

There is so much to be learnt of the depth of our own sinfulness, the enormity of God's grace and the love that we should have in him and so for our fellow brothers and sisters. Thank God for good travelmates who've come alongside, who are not afraid to smack me over the head when I've wandered off the path. By God's grace, may we continue to encourage each other to deeper obedience and faithfulness to our Lord.

It's a new year, but it's the same journey towards God. We must turn neither left nor right but keep on the straight and narrow path.