“And he answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.”
—Luke 10:27
“The single most influential factor in whether or not you’re able to help another person is who you are—your own walk, your own faith, your own love for God. Second, genuine love for others is fundamental. Every person who walks into a relationship with any other person, at some level, is asking, “Are you trustworthy?” A second question is, “Can I be honest with you?” With someone you trust, you are willing to be honest about things that matter: dark things, bright things, happy things, hard things, struggles, guilts, sins, and joys. We can talk about the light and the deep, and we can talk about the happy and the sad. The final questions are about their own relationship with God: “Will I embrace the change purposes of Christ? Will I get a biblical agenda for my life?” Will I be a thorn bush or fruit tree? Will faith work through love or will lies and idolatry work through selfishness and fear? Now think through these questions from the lens of your relationship with God. Do you trust God? Is the quality of your conversation with God up to what it is with people? Our best human relationships can shine a mirror and say, “Now, the reason I trust that person is because he or she actually, in some tiny way, is like God. They’re manifesting something of what the real God is like. Thus, if I’m able to have this kind of head-on relationship of substance with that person, how much more with the real God who stands behind the person?”
—David Powlison