Living a Christ like Life

We visited a church on Sunday and the pastor spoke on "Walking the Walk."  He said that we are to live a Christ like life and the characteristics of doing so are humility, gentleness, patience and love.  I wonder how many of us could look at those four words and honestly say that we constantly strive to put them into practice.  The Bible says that we should not only love our neighbors, but love our enemies.  It also says that we should love our neighbors like we love ourselves!  I know we don't practice this enough.  Let's look at what scripture backs this up: Matthew 5:42-44, Matthew 19:19, Matthew 22:39, Mark 12:31, Mark 12:33, Luke 10:27, Romans 13:7-9, Romans 13:10, Galatians 5:14, and James 2:8.

That is a lot of scripture to back up the same teaching!  My prayer goal is to love my neighbor as myself.  I believe a neighbor is anyone that I come in contact with.  The definitions of a neighbor are:

1. One who lives near or next to another.

2. A person, place, or thing adjacent to or located near another.

3. A fellow human.
 
We should love everyone as ourselves!  That is hard work!  I believe that much prayer is needed to attain this goal.  The Holy Spirit must work through us, because as mere humans, this is very hard to do!  The scripture makes it very plain though; God wants us to love others above all and to love others more than ourselves.