Keep the Faith with Ty’Ann Brown: Love God and Thy Neighbor

Hello, everyone, I’m Ty’Ann Brown, encouraging you to keep the faith.

Situations are changing around us literally every single day. From the coronavirus pandemic affecting our world globally, to protests of racism and the role of police in our society, everything is being questioned, and everything that we know is being reexamined.

Many are grieving to the loss of a loved one, whether it be to Covid or whether one has lost a job, or whether one has just lost a sense of certainty.

But there is one thing that is not uncertain even now, that is God’s love for you. For John 4:16 says, “And we know and rely on the love that God has for us, for God is love. Whoever lives in love, lives in God and God in them.”

No matter what’s happening in our lives, in our world, in our communities, in our families, one thing is you can depend on God’s love. And you can use that as a foundation to stand on in these uncertain times. But how do we take that love and help make us make sense of the world around us? My solution is to commit to two things every single day. And that is one, to love God, and two, love your neighbor.

“Well, how do we do that?,” you may be asking. We are quarantined right now, there’s social distancing, there’s riots happening in our streets, and some of us are not working. What are we supposed to do? Well, an easy answer to that is to pray. Pray to God and thank Him for all of His many blessings. And there are many, many blessings that God is still distributing, even in the most toughest of times.

Every single day that I wake up tired, sick or frustrated, no matter what’s going on in my life, I make sure to thank God for another day. Come on, thank God with me. God, we thank you. And then pray for other people, that includes those that you may not understand and even those who you may consider to be your enemy.

Take the time to pray for those and write down the prayer requests, pour it out on a page. Maybe even join a prayer circle and pray for those who you find frustrating or those who may be your annoying neighbor. They may be of a different political party, they may be of a different race, they may have even hurt you very deeply.

There are, of course, other ways that we can show our love to God. We can show it by doing good deeds, by drawing closer to God, by reading and studying the Bible, and, most importantly, by obeying His commands.

Regular and heartfelt prayer is a great first step. But I want you to remember these two steps, loving God and loving your neighbor, are heavily intertwined. For 1 John 4:20 says, “If someone says that they love God and hate their neighbor, they are a liar, for how can you hate your brother whom you have seen, but love God whom you have not seen?” So prayer is a great first step, but make sure you love God and love your neighbor. And make sure that love is in everything that you do. I love you, God loves you, keep the faith.