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The Greatest Commandment

Good morning!

Since my bible study on Monday night, I have been thinking about Matthew 23:37-39:

Jesus replied: "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself."

If you are not familiar, this is Jesus' response to the question - what is the greatest commandment?

Life is complicated. God is not complicated. Well, on one hand you could say He is the most complex being EVER in the history of what was, is, and is to be; but on the other, He lays out his desires for us in the most simple of steps.

1) Love Him
2) Love your neighbor.

It's a simple thing really. Look at what you are doing. Is it nice? Is it how you would treat yourself? Yes; fantastic! Keep going.

Same thing with God. Look at what you are doing (but here, add, what are you thinking but not saying). Is it loving? Does it show God's love? Yes; fantastic again!

But now here's where I hope to stretch you. Where I myself am being stretched. You can be the best the person in the world. Generous. Loving. Helpful. Kind. You can exude all the fruits of the spirit; BUT the reason the first and greatest commandment is there is because it IS the first and greatest commandment! :) If you do those great things without loving God and showing His love to the world, what are you doing?

So for people who say that there is no way to know God's will for our lives; or to know the will of God, I hope to remember to point them to these 3 verses in Matthew. We obviously cannot know God's will for our lives to the extent that He does because we are not God. But we have a pretty simple test for our moral compass and our daily actions. Are we loving the Lord? Do our actions serve as a result of that love? If you truly love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your mind; you will have no choice but to love your neighbor as yourself*. It all goes together in a nice little circle.

But the question that keeps tugging at me is this, and maybe some of you wonder too. How can we love God with all of that? Our heart and our soul and our mind? We have to get to know Him. We have to be in the Word. We have to invite the Holy Spirit in. We have to talk to people who know more than us. We have to get to know Jesus. We have to talk to God (meaning, we have to pray.) Not just shoot our petitions up to the sky, we need to praise and give time for Him to speak to us. We have to keep growing. Like C.S. Lewis and Lee Strobel found out as they were trying to disprove God; the more you learn about God the more you Love Him and know that He is who he says He is (I'm taking some poetic license there with those two great authors!!). And because of that; we must love Him, and others, as he commanded us to.

*please note that as a human on this earth, I fail at this every day. My hope is that in breaking it down, we have something simpler to strive for!

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