Good Neighbor?

In what’s known as the Great Commandment, Jesus says all that’s truly important can be summed up in love – loving God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength, and loving your neighbors as yourself.

It’s often easier to obey the first part, because God is perfect and easy to love when you get to know Him. But the second part is more difficult, since sinful people can be hard to love.

The good news is that when you answer God’s call to reach out to your neighbors in love, He’ll help you every step of the way – and in the process, both you and your neighbors will be blessed. Here’s how you can be a good neighbor:

Realize who the term “neighbors” includes. In the broadest sense, your neighbors are all of the people you encounter as you go through life. But your literal neighbors are the people who live close to your home – those in your actual neighborhood – and Jesus wants you to do your best to love them.

Recognize the benefits of reaching out to your neighbors. You’ll enjoy a closer relationship with Jesus when you obey His commands (such as the one to love your neighbors), and you’ll experience His love in new and powerful ways. You and your neighbors will be able to connect your stories to the greater story that God is creating in the world. Finally, developing relationships with your neighbors will help you all feel cared for rather than isolated.

Pray for compassion and flexibility. Ask God to help you notice and care about the needs of those who live near you, and to empower you to be flexible with your daily schedule so you can accommodate your neighbors.

Make room for new relationships in your life. In order to have enough time and energy available for reaching out to your neighbors, you must create space in your life by letting go of activities that aren’t as important as loving your neighbors. Ask God to help you move from a lifestyle of busyness and accumulation to one of conversation and community. Adopt a slower pace of life so you’ll have some free time and energy available to use regularly to develop relationships with your neighbors. Ask God to help you say “no” to some good activities that aren’t really important so you can focus on what’s most important, like spending time with your neighbors. Make relationships a high priority in your life, and build your schedule around activities that will help you invest in your relationships. Identify time-wasting activities in your life (such as watching too much TV) and eliminate them to free up more time for developing relationships. Be flexible about your daily agenda. Ask God to help you be willing to be interrupted and inconvenienced by your neighbors so you can really love them when God wants you to do so.

Overcome fear. Since the unknown often scares us, it’s natural to feel afraid of approaching people you don’t yet know. But keep in mind that very few people are actually dangerous; they’re usually just normal people with interesting quirks. Remember, too, that God has placed desires to be known, accepted, and cared for into every person’s soul, so your neighbors will likely welcome your efforts to get to know them. Pray for the strength you need to overcome fear, take the initiative to break through the isolation in your neighborhood, and start relationships with your neighbors.

The UnGodly

In a short letter of Jude, which is only 25 verses:

Greeting to the Called

¹ Jude, a bond-servant of Jesus Christ, and brother of James,

To those who are called, sanctified by God the Father, and preserved in Jesus Christ:

² Mercy, peace, and love be multiplied to you.

Contend for the Faith

³ Beloved, while I was very diligent to write to you concerning our common salvation, I found it necessary to write to you exhorting you to contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints. ⁴ For certain men have crept in unnoticed, who long ago were marked out for this condemnation, ungodly men, who turn the grace of our God into lewdness and deny the only Lord God^[b] and our Lord Jesus Christ.

Old and New Apostates

⁵ But I want to remind you, though you once knew this, that the Lord, having saved the people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed those who did not believe. ⁶ And the angels who did not keep their proper domain, but left their own abode, He has reserved in everlasting chains under darkness for the judgment of the great day; ⁷ as Sodom and Gomorrah, and the cities around them in a similar manner to these, having given themselves over to sexual immorality and gone after strange flesh, are set forth as an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire.

⁸ Likewise also these dreamers defile the flesh, reject authority, and speak evil of dignitaries. ⁹ Yet Michael the archangel, in contending with the devil, when he disputed about the body of Moses, dared not bring against him a reviling accusation, but said, “The Lord rebuke you!” ¹⁰ But these speak evil of whatever they do not know; and whatever they know naturally, like brute beasts, in these things they corrupt themselves. ¹¹ Woe to them! For they have gone in the way of Cain, have run greedily in the error of Balaam for profit, and perished in the rebellion of Korah.

Apostates Depraved and Doomed

¹² These are spots in your love feasts, while they feast with you without fear, serving only themselves. They are clouds without water, carried about^[c] by the winds; late autumn trees without fruit, twice dead, pulled up by the roots; ¹³ raging waves of the sea, foaming up their own shame; wandering stars for whom is reserved the blackness of darkness forever.

¹⁴ Now Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied about these men also, saying, “Behold, the Lord comes with ten thousands of His saints, ¹⁵ to execute judgment on all, to convict all who are ungodly among them of all their ungodly deeds which they have committed in an ungodly way, and of all the harsh things which ungodly sinners have spoken against Him.”

Apostates Predicted

¹⁶ These are grumblers, complainers, walking according to their own lusts; and they mouth great swelling words, flattering people to gain advantage. ¹⁷ But you, beloved, remember the words which were spoken before by the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ: ¹⁸ how they told you that there would be mockers in the last time who would walk according to their own ungodly lusts. ¹⁹ These are sensual persons, who cause divisions, not having the Spirit.

Maintain Your Life with God

²⁰ But you, beloved, building yourselves up on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Spirit, ²¹ keep yourselves in the love of God, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life.

²² And on some have compassion, making a distinction; ²³ but others save with fear, pulling them out of the fire, hating even the garment defiled by the flesh.

Glory to God

²⁴ Now to Him who is able to keep you^[f] from stumbling,
And to present you faultless
Before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy,
²⁵ To God our Savior,
Who alone is wise,
Be glory and majesty,
Dominion and power,
Both now and forever.
Amen.

Jude not only tells of the coming apostasy in the end times, he describes what an apostate really is. He identifies the apostate himself. Verse 4, he calls them un-Godly. Morally perverted and denies Christ. In verse 8, he describes the apostate as one who defile the flesh, rebellious, reviles Holy angels, and in verse 10, he calls them dreamers, ignorant, and corrupted. In verse 16, he describes them as grumblers, fault finders, self seeking, arrogant speakers and flatterers. In verse 18 he describes them as mockers and in verse 19, he describes them as caused division, worldly minded and without the spirit.
In all 25 verses - Jude not only warned us of the coming apostasy, but also describes the apostate for us as I said above. If you are any of these 18 type of people, you may have fallen into apostasy. Please repent immediately. As Jude speaks of in verses 22 and 23. And on some have compassion, making a distinction on others, save with fear, pulling them out of the fire, hating even the garment defiled by the flesh. 
Jude ends his letter with one of the greatest doxologies in the Bible: verses 24, 25:  

Glory to God

²⁴ Now to Him who is able to keep you from stumbling,
And to present you faultless
Before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy,
²⁵ To God our Savior,
Who alone is wise,
Be glory and majesty,
Dominion and power,
Both now and forever.
Amen.

~Daniel