How to Love Your Neighbor Without Being Weird

I have just moved into a new neighborhood after living in our last home for over 20 years!

Our new home was one of the first built on a brand new street, so ALL of us are new.

Everyday I tell myself to get out there and MEET these new friends, I just haven’t gotten around to much more than a friendly wave as we pass one another.

My friend Amy Lively has some wonderful advice! I have just begun to snuggle up with her book to take it all in!

Enjoy this Guest Post from her today!

Have you ever thought, “I want to love my neighbor, but I don’t know how”?

How to Love Your Neighbor Without Being Weird by Amy Lively is packed with practical, adaptable tips and tools for introverts or extroverts, and people who live in big cities or small villages. If you want to get rid of the guilt about disobeying Christ’s #2 command to love our neighbor but don’t want to alienate or offend your neighbors in the process, this book is for you.

Amy wasn’t always a good neighbor – in fact, she says she wasn’t always even a good believer.

In Chapter One she tells her story of running from God for 20 years before natural relationships with godly women changed her spiritual destiny—and this happened outside of church, at coffee shops and playgrounds. Once Amy returned to the Lord, however, it was as if Jesus was locked inside her house! She lived in her neighborhood for seven years before she attempted to get to know her neighbors, and even this was done kicking and screaming. She fought the Lord for a long time before finally inviting 89 neighbors over for coffee. This gathering of women in homes became an international ministry called The Neighborhood Café, and this book was also an outcome of her experience in her own neighborhood.

The Neighborhood Cafe

You may be asking, “Isn’t it ‘loving my neighbor’ when I support world missions or witness to my hairdresser?” Yes, it is… but we have globalized the definition of neighbor to include everyone in the whole wide world, conveniently excluding the people who live right next door—the ones who can reject us. Jesus had a different way of loving His neighbor. He simply sat down with His neighbors at their tables, in their homes, and they did life together.
Loving our neighbor means investing in relationships – it’s sometimes messy, but it’s always meaningful.

If you’re struggling to build relationships in your community, How to Love Your Neighbor Without Being Weird teaches you six other areas where you can interact and engage with your neighbors: family, government, education, business, arts and entertainment, media. Along with religion, these seven areas have shaped every culture in every generation, and they are active forces in your community today. These areas impact the people living around you, and the influence of the Gospel is desperately needed in each area.

You’ll never lean on God more or see Him more clearly than when you obey His #2 command

Visit Amy’s website to be entered in THIS amazing drawing!

2 COFFEES Single-serve Columbian coffees.
2 COASTERS to put under your steaming mugs.
1 BOOK A signed copy of Amy’s book, How to Love Your Neighbor Without Being Weird.

Let me just say–if you win, I want to come to your house for COFFEE!! 🙂

Hugs,

Pat

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