Mission Work: Why you should love your coworkers; even when it is hard!

Guess what day it is? Yep it is love others Friday. Every Friday this month I'm challenging myself and my readers to love others well.

I hope you realize I'm not perfect at loving others and this week I will tackle one of my biggest challenges. I have a hard time loving those closest to me, so this week I challenge myself to do better by loving my coworkers. Instead of how as in my last posts I'm going to explain to you why we should love our coworkers.

Time to get started, why should you love your coworkers?

1. You spend hours with these people every week. Do you really want to miss your opportunity to show your coworkers God's love?  Do you really want to spend these hours disliking or angry at those around you? I don't; it steals my joy, peace and just makes things worse.
2. Your coworkers are humans.  This means they get sick, they have emotions; excitement, anger and disappointment. Just like you want someone you can count on when your sick, excited, or disappointed; you should be there for your coworkers. This even fits into #1 of showing others God's love.   In 1 John 4:19 we read ^"We love because he first loved us." Jesus modeled being there for others in love, because he was first loved by God.
3. Loving / blessing your coworkers can boast their mood, as well as your mood, both in the office and outside. When you decide to love and bless you coworkers you're no longer focusing on yourself. this keeps you out of the pity party and helps to boast your mood. Loving and blessing your coworkers helps them to feel loved and boast their mood. A perfect trade off, they are happy, you are happy.
4. You are loved, so share the love. Jesus knew that God loved him, he also knew that God loved us. Jesus told us in Mark 12:31 "The second is this: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no commandment greater than these." So since we know we are loved we should help our coworkers know they are loved.  

Now that you know why you should love your coworkers, I challenge you to join me. Start with a plan of how you can show your coworkers love. Maybe create a list of things you can do to show your coworkers love, and start loving them. They may make it hard, but pray for strength and wisdom. Trust that God will bless your efforts.