I was fifteen years old and I hated the world.

That is not an exaggeration. It was not a phase or a mood. It was a settled, burning reality that lived inside my chest every single day. Life had handed me wounds I did not ask for, and somewhere along the way, those wounds had curdled into something dark. I looked at people and felt nothing but contempt. I wanted distance. I wanted walls. I wanted everyone to just leave me alone.

Then I got kicked out of school.

Which, looking back, was one of the greatest gifts God ever gave me.

I ended up at this small Christian school where people kept telling me about Jesus. His love. His forgiveness. His salvation. I heard it again and again. And one day, at an altar call, I walked forward, stood before God, and did something I had never done before. I asked Him honestly, almost like a dare: If You are real, show me.

He showed me.

What happened next is the only way I know to describe it: He literally burned the hate out of my heart. Not metaphorically. Not gradually. Right there, in that moment, something that had defined me for years was simply... gone. And what rushed in to fill the space it left behind was overwhelming. I looked out at all the people sitting in that room and I was flooded with an intense, almost unbearable love for every single one of them. A desire to protect them. A longing to tell them what had just happened to me. A hunger to spend the rest of my life making sure nobody had to stay in the prison I had just walked out of.

That was not me. I want to be very clear about that. That was Jesus.

Here is what I have learned in the years since: human beings cannot manufacture that kind of love on their own. We can manage tolerance. We can perform kindness. We can white-knuckle our way through being civil to people we would rather avoid. But that deep, selfless, almost fierce love for others? The kind that sees a stranger and genuinely wants good for them? That does not come from willpower or spiritual discipline or years of trying harder.

It comes from an encounter with the One who is love Himself.

The Apostle John said it plainly. We love because He first loved us. It is not a command to manufacture something from nothing. It is an invitation to receive something we could never produce ourselves, and then let it flow outward. Jesus does not ask us to love people and then leave us to figure out how. He fills us with Himself, and love becomes the natural overflow of that fullness.

Maybe you are reading this this morning and love feels like hard work. Maybe you are exhausted by certain relationships. Maybe, if you are being completely honest, there are people in your life that you struggle to feel anything warm toward at all. I understand that more than you know.

But here is the good news that has carried me for decades now: you are not the source. You were never meant to be the source. Jesus is the source, and He is outrageously generous with what He carries.

Go to Him this morning. Not with a performance. Not with a five-step plan to become a more loving person. Just go to Him. Ask Him to fill you with what only He can give. Ask Him to let His love for the people around you become your love for them too.

He answered a bitter fifteen-year-old boy who dared Him to prove Himself real.

He will answer you.

Have a beautiful morning. You are deeply loved, and because of Jesus, you are free to love deeply in return.