I talked about this phrase back HERE, some beautiful words from our church leaders to let others in to our lives.
I hope those around us who are not in our church congregations will “love, share and invite” right back. We have so much to learn from each other!
The first presidency of our church encouraged everyone worldwide to have a lesson about Love, Share, Invite at church today and I loved ours. (I would love to hear thoughts from others who had the same lesson!)
Three main take-aways for me that I loved from our lesson today:
1) The purpose of missionary work is to share the love of God with others. When the Savior was preparing to leave His apostles, he pleaded with them to “Feed My Sheep.” That is missionary work. Looking to strengthen those around us, “strengthen the feeble knees.” Serve and uplift and befriend in any way we can. I think we are so quick in our church to translate “missionary work” to helping people to come to church, but it’s really just love, sharing and inviting as Christ would.
2) The admonition to love, share and invite is not only beautiful encouragement for us with people not of our faith, but within our own congregations as well. One woman brought up the fact that although she has nurtured her children the best she possibly could in the church, none of her sons chose to serve missions. She requested that we nurture and love those that chose not to serve for whatever reason just as much as we do those outside of the church. To which the teacher stopped and had us all take a moment to make an inner commitment that we “not be the headwind on another’s path.” I thought that was so beautiful. It is so easy to judge where someone is coming from from our own vantage points, but the truth is, we just don’t know the whole story for anyone else.
3) We are all in different stages of continual conversion. It is a constant process, one that we need to continue to work on, we never really “arrive.” And we can use all the help we can get from each other in and out of this particular church. I’m grateful for those around me, as well as readers on this blog, who have helped me on the path of my own personal conversion to God.
May we all strive to love, share and invite better, and may we be open to the little nudges that come along to do so.
Because we all need that “Good News” that we have access to continual new beginnings through Jesus Christ as we sometimes trudge through the difficult things…and as we glide through the beautiful sunsets and rainbows as well.
I love this. Each of your points is so well-said.. I especially appreciated your second sentence about inviting others to tell us about their own beliefs. There are so many incredibly great Christians, Muslims, Hindus and on and on who could teach us so much if we could love them enough to invite them to share their own devotions to God with us. There is so much to learn from them.