As you love other people, your life will be an irresistible, living-and-breathing invitation for others to experience the love of God themselves. And when curious inquirers approach you, hoping to discover more about God’s love, they will likely tell you things that they may not feel safe sharing with anyone else — sins that have served as barriers between them and God.

Keep in mind that you do not need to experience exactly what someone else has lived through in order to connect with that person. You can identify with far more people than you realize. Connecting with someone on a spiritual level is really a matter of identifying with the feelings that result from that person’s experiences, then ministering to those emotions.

• * You may not be a hardened criminal, but do you know what it feels like to be distant from God?
• * You may not have grown up fatherless, but have you ever longed for attention and approval?
• * You may not have ever been a prostitute, but have you ever experienced a sense of desperation and hopelessness?
• * Maybe you’ve never been physically abused, but do you know what fear and anger feel like?

Of course you do. Let us reduce our life’s experiences to the common denominators of human emotion, and we’ll realize that we are all far more alike than we are different.

Imagine what would happen if we learned to overlook our differences and focused instead on our similarities. Wouldn’t we realize that we are ALL sinners in need of God’s grace? Wouldn’t we find it easier to love others with the love we’ve been given? Let’s ask the Lord to help us pass the test of a true bride of Christ. Let’s embrace His extravagant love, see ourselves as His beloved, and boldly entice others to experience His matchless love for themselves.