BAR NONE RECORDS · CITIES OF A’S

Love Makes a Difference

The long teaching behind the song — how do I know that I’m loving?

Listen to the song on YouTube →

Watch: Love Makes a Difference — the short (2:39). The written teaching follows below.

BEAT ONE

THE GREATEST COMMANDMENT

A lawyer once tried to trap Jesus with a question. Master, which is the great commandment in the law?

It was a loaded question. The law had hundreds of commands. Pick one, and you’ve demoted the rest. Jesus didn’t hesitate. Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets. That’s Matthew 22.

Hang. Everything else hangs on these two. Take them away and the whole structure falls.

So here’s what has been bothering me. If love is the greatest commandment, why do we spend so little time learning what it means? We teach on giving. We teach on prayer, on purpose, on prosperity. But ask most people, including most church people, how they know they’re actually loving someone, and you’ll get a pause. Then usually an answer about a feeling.

This song was born on Sunday, September 27th. Pastor John Anderson had just finished part two of his Indelible Marks series at Dunamis Outreach Ministries. Then Pastor Kelly stood up with one question: what difference will you make this week? And it has to be done, Pastor Kelly said, with love and kindness.

Love and difference. I couldn’t separate those two words after that. Here’s how the song opens.

BEAT TWO

NOT BY THE WORDS, NOT BY THE FEELING

The song asks a simple question. How do I know that I’m loving?

Most of us measure love two ways. By what we say, and by what we feel. I’ve said I love you. I meant it. I felt it. So I must be loving.

But think about how easy those two are. I can say I love you on the phone and hang up and do nothing. I can feel something deep at a funeral and never call the family again. I can feel moved in church, feel it in my chest when the music plays, and walk past somebody in need in the parking lot.

John put it plainly. My little children, let us not love in word, neither in tongue; but in deed and in truth. First John 3:18. Not in word. In deed.

Now the physician’s note, because I don’t want anyone to hear me say feelings don’t matter. Feelings are real. They carry information. Warmth toward someone can be the first spark that gets you moving. But a feeling is a starting point, not a measurement. A feeling never carried groceries up the steps. Somebody’s hands did that.

So the song says: not by the words, not by the feeling. That doesn’t throw the feeling away. It just refuses to let it be the test.

When I counted what I had actually done, some days my hands were empty. That’s the first verse.

BEAT THREE

WHO IS BETTER BECAUSE I WAS HERE?

If words and feelings aren’t the test, what is?

Here’s the working definition I keep coming back to. Love is enough concern for another person that you help them become their best self.

That gives us a test anyone can use. Who is better because I was here? Not who feels good about me. Not who I said nice things to. Who is actually better? Healthier, steadier, more whole, more themselves, because I showed up.

Sometimes that means giving people what they want. Sometimes it means giving them what they need. And what people need is often simpler than we think.

I’m a public health practitioner, and over the years I’ve sat in conversations with many different groups: people in prison, people in recovery, and people in other social circles who appear to be in pain. Across all of them, I’ve heard the same hunger. Not for advice. Everybody has advice. For emotional support. Someone who stays. Someone who sits beside them and doesn’t leave. Someone who affirms that they’re here, and that they matter. That’s often the thing that would make people better, and too many never get it.

Now one guardrail, and it’s an important one. Love that decides what’s best for someone without them isn’t love. It’s control. The goal is not to make people into who we want them to be. The goal is helping people become who they were born to be. That’s their life, their pencil, their page. Love walks beside them. It doesn’t take the pen.

That’s the chorus. Question, answer, and the test.

BEAT FOUR

WHERE WE’VE SEEN IT

You already know what this kind of love looks like, because you’ve seen it.

Maybe in a parent who worked doubles through the night. Never said I love you out loud. Didn’t need to. You were fed. The lights were on. You were alright. The love was in what they did.

Maybe in a neighbor with a shovel. The song pictures a man clearing a widow’s walk before she even wakes up. She never asked. She may never know who did it. That’s love that isn’t looking for credit.

And here’s the one people forget. The friend who told you the truth you didn’t want to hear. That didn’t feel like love in the moment. It probably felt like an attack. But they said it because they cared more about you becoming better than about you liking them. And then they waited on the other side of your pride until you were ready to come back.

That’s an important point. Love that makes you better isn’t always comfortable. A surgeon’s knife isn’t comfortable either. The test isn’t whether it felt good. The test is whether you’re better.

Love was never what they said. Love was what they’d do. That word, would, matters. It wasn’t one good deed. It was a pattern. It was who they were, over and over again.

BEAT FIVE

LOVE CAN START SMALL

Now, if all this sounds too big, let me bring it down to size. Some days love is smaller than a shovel or a meal.

A stranger smiles at you one morning. Didn’t cost her anything. She doesn’t know your name. But something in you lifts. And a few minutes later you hold the door for somebody you would have walked past. And they pass it on.

Here’s something I’ve learned over years of practicing medicine and public health. Positive emotions tend to birth positive actions. When someone feels seen, even for a second, they’re more likely to see someone else. The reverse is true too. Stress narrows us. When we’re carrying too much, we react instead of respond, and the people around us pay for it.

That’s part of why I built the Citizen Report Card. When people get more A’s in their lives, there’s less stress, and less stress makes room for better behavior. Love grows best in lives that aren’t drowning.

So here’s how a feeling becomes an action. A smile is a feeling given away. The moment you hand it to someone, it stops being something you feel and becomes something you do. A smile becomes a kindness. A kindness finds a hand. And love that starts that simple can grow bigger than any of us planned.

Love was never in the size. It’s what we choose to do.

BEAT SIX

GOD’S EXAMPLE: HE GAVE

Where did we get this pattern? From God.

John 3:16. For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son. Notice the verb. Loved, and then gave. God didn’t just feel something about us from a distance. He acted. He made a difference.

And look at what He gave. Not always what we wanted. Always what would make us whole. His Son. His Word. The breath in our lungs. Healing. Every gift aimed at making us better, body, mind, and soul.

Romans 5:8 tells us when He did it. God commendeth His love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Not after we cleaned up. Not after we earned it. While we were yet sinners. That’s love that doesn’t wait for the other person to deserve it.

And He didn’t love us from a distance. He came down. The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us. That’s the ultimate version of someone who stayed.

First John 4:19 says we love Him, because He first loved us. That’s where the pattern starts. We don’t invent love. We learn it by receiving it. And then we pass it on, the same way the stranger’s smile got passed on, just on an eternal scale.

So when I ask, who is better because I was here, I’m really asking whether my life looks anything like His.

BEAT SEVEN

WHEN FEELINGS DECEIVE

Now I need to go somewhere harder, and this is the part I most want people to hear.

Feelings can be manufactured. Somebody who wants to use you can make you feel loved. In my work I’ve seen what happens in human trafficking. A person is made to feel chosen, wanted, protected. The feelings are strong and they are real. But if you look at what’s actually happening, she’s not being made better. She’s being made smaller, more isolated, more dependent. The feeling said love. The fruit said something else.

The same is true of lust. Lust produces powerful feelings. It feels like connection. But lust is about what I get. Love is about who becomes better. Paul wrote that love seeketh not her own, and that love worketh no ill to his neighbour. Lust does both.

That’s why the song refuses to measure love by feeling. Not because feelings are bad, but because the test protects you. When somebody says they love you, you can ask the same question. Am I better because you’re here? If the answer is no, the feeling is lying to you.

Then turn the test around, because Jesus said love your neighbor as yourself. That means two things. Love yourself enough to choose what makes you better. And then ask the honest question: would I want to be loved the way I’ve loved the rest?

If this is the greatest commandment, it belongs first on my list.

BEAT EIGHT

MEASURE IT TRUE

So what changes going forward?

The song ends with a decision. Starting today, I’ll measure it true. Not what I felt, but what I’d do.

Here’s what that looks like in practice. Show up early. Stay until it’s done. Listen longer than you talk. Start with something simple. Pass along a smile. And aim every act of love at one goal: helping the other person become who they were born to be.

Let me give you a way to start this week. Pick one person. Just one. Someone in your home, your work, your church, your block. Ask yourself honestly: are they better because I’m in their life? Then do one thing, this week, that would make the answer yes.

And take the Citizen Report Card at smartplace dot today. It’s free and takes about ten minutes. Several of the categories are love in action: family time, community service, a healthy home. Grade yourself honestly. Mine is a 3.4, and I’m working on it. A true grade is worth more than a perfect one you had to pretend for.

The report card isn’t about judging you. It’s about giving you a way to measure love by what you do, not just by what you feel.

BEAT NINE

PASS IT ON

Let me close where the song closes.

How do I know that I’m loving? Not by the words. Not by the feeling. By this: somebody is better because I was here.

That’s a sentence I want said about my life. I think you want it said about yours.

Before you go, think about who this was for. Someone who has heard I love you and still felt alone. Someone who was told they were loved and was never made better by it. Someone wondering whether the love they give is really making a difference.

Do you know someone like that? If so, pass this on. Send it to them. You don’t have to explain it. Sometimes the most loving thing you can do is put the right words in front of the right person.

That’s how the smile travels. That’s how the door gets held. That’s how love makes a difference.

THE SONG

Listen

Love Makes a Difference, from Bar None Records. Open the song on YouTube

Love makes a difference. Send this to somebody who has heard “I love you” and still felt alone.

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The Be Team | Cities of A’s | James E. Blessman Jr., M.D., M.P.H. | © 2011–2026