Love Your God With All Your Heart...and Your Neighbor Too

It has been a year since I last posted. A good year of work and growth. The kids are growing up and the first son graduated from high school and will soon move on to college.

This past year I have become much concerned about world events and pray daily that God will grant wisdom to leaders around the world and toleration for people.

Today I led devotions at our women's fellowship group at church and chose Matthew 22:37-39 as my passage.

To paraphrase, "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind. Love your neighbor as yourself."

With so much hate and so little toleration in the world today an emphasis on this verse seems important today.

As Christians, our first concern is to love God totally. We must give our total love to God, a love that dominates our emotion, directs our thoughts, and motivates our actions. Our love for God starts with a total commitment of life to God. It is through our love for God that we are able to love Man. Man is loveable because he was created in God's image, remembering that is the only way we can love some people.

We all have loving people in our lives, people we would do most anything for, but there are also those that are very difficult to love. A man who runs down families who are out to enjoy the day is not easy to love. A person who abuses children is not easy to love. A person who is always negative and rude is not easy to love. I think Jesus knows we will have some enemies in our lives, and he still calls us to love them.

In the Sermon on the Mount we are even called to pray for those who persecute us. Again, Jesus knew it would be hard to love everyone, but still he commands us to pray for them. We may not be able to love someone so much that they become good, but the Holy Spirit can intercede on our behalf and sometimes the heart of an evil one can indeed change. We are called to pray, some are even called to become prayer warriors.

We need to pray for the Holy Spirit's intervention and we need to pray for those wounded in body and spirit and for those whose loved ones have been snatched away from them. Only God can give them true comfort, but some of us are called to reach out to sit with those in pain and those that are confused.

We need to remember that our neighbor can live next door, down the street or road, someone we pass during our day or someone we work with often. There are many hurting people in this world that need a kind or encouraging word. Let us not fear those that look different from us or that we don't understand. If we find ourselves fearful, remember that God's perfect love casts out fear.