When Our Love Grows Cold

What happens when we struggle to love those we’ve come to share the Gospel with?

“I feel like I failed.” I commented to my wife after a recent visit from family. They came to visit us in North Africa and during their stay we had a series of frustrating interactions with North Africans. Each interaction left me increasingly irritated with our host culture, and I responded out of that irritation.  

We were there to share the love of Christ, yet I found my own love for North Africans growing cold. What was wrong with me?  

I had spent eleven years living in this nation, trying to take every opportunity to share the Hope within me and trying to love those around me.  But at times the day-to-day encounters with North Africans left me feeling anything but loving.  

Over the years my wife and I have had a variety of responses from Christians when we share that we work among Muslims. Sometimes we’re told “Oh, I could never to do that” or other times it’s a response along the lines of “God hasn’t given me a heart for that people group”.  

Honestly, I don’t know that I always “have a heart for Muslims” and there are certainly times where I think there are people that would be much better at working among North Africans than I am.  

But maybe we have things upside down. In 2 Corinthians 5:14-15 we read,

“14 For Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died. 15 And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again.” 

Pastor and church planter among Muslims, Dick Brodgen shares about this passage in the book Missionary God, Missionary Bible,

“The construction of “the love of Christ compels us” in Greek grammatically allows for triple application. It could mean that the love we have for the lost compels us to mission. It could mean that the love we have for Jesus compels us to mission. It could mean that the love Jesus has for the lost compels us to mission. Because the grammatical construction is flexible, context must help us discern the intended meaning. The first two options we discard, for we quickly find there are many days we do not love the lost and sadly on some days we do not love Jesus as we ought. Besides, God’s missions it too important to depend on the fickle love of man. The third option is true because only God’s love never wanes and because the text is universal in scope: we persuade men, Jesus died for all, if anyone is in Christ. How thankful we must be that the motivation for mission is God’s unfailing love, not man’s fickle, feeble emotion. Woe to the missionary who ventures forth armed only with their personal love for the lost.”

It is not my feeble love for North Africans nor my imperfect love for Christ that compels me, but it is the truth of Christ’s love for North Africans that compels me to share. His love and His character remain steadfast and true despite my own wanderings.   

It is a great relief that living among North Africans does not require that I have unwavering love for North Africans. It does require a deep unwavering belief in the love that Christ has for them.  

We don’t go to the unreached because of our love for them or because of our love for Christ. We go because of Christ’s love.