If we must jealously guard our love for Christ, we need also to guard our love for people. Just as the Holy Spirit moves us to love Christ, he motivates us to sacrificially love others. But as we have seen, believers can act selfishly and disobey God's Word. As the eighteenth-century evangelist Henry Moorhouse observed in a letter to a friend, "Love seems in so many hearts to have gone to sleep."
When love goes to sleep, we grow cold and unfeeling toward people. We love material possessions and personal comforts more than people. We love our work more than people. We become bitter toward people because our feelings have been hurt. We become weary in serving selfish, ungrateful people and become content to show love only to those who are agreeable to us. We become lazy and complacent about love. We neglect our duty to love the unlovely and the disagreeable. (p. 61-62)
From Love or Die by Alexander Strauch
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