Deuteronomy 6:5 - Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.
This verse is in the context of rules the God gave to his people so that they would be able to live a long and fulfilled life... verse one and two state:
These are the commands, decrees and laws the LORD your God directed me to teach you to observe in the land that you are crossing the Jordan to possess, so that you, your children and their children after them may fear the LORD your God as long as you live by keeping all his decrees and commands that I give you, and so that you may enjoy long life.
It goes on after verse 5 to tell the people to write the commands on their doorframes, talk about them, impress them on their children - anything to remember them! See, God knew these people just as He knows us. He asked them to do these things so that they would be able to remember His commands. It shows just how important it was for them, and us today! If you read this and know that the people feared God and did these things, them maybe we should make more effort - come on everyone get out those memory verses! ;)
Matthew 22:37 - Jesus replied: " 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind
This is a very significant verse. The Pharisees decided to test Jesus and one of them asked Him "Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?" If Jesus told them that this were the most important commandment then it should be followed! Nothing should ever come before Jesus.
Mark 12:30 - Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.'
This is repeated so many times in the Bible! Let's just think here. What do you do to remember something - oh look!... God already told the people to write it down so that they could repeat it and remember it - and He's done the same! He's written it down again for us so that we can remember it as it is repeated!
Luke 10:27 - He answered: " 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind' ; and, 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' "
Again here someone who just happened to be an expert in the Law decided to test Jesus. "Teacher," he asked, "what must I do to inherit eternal life?" The above was Jesus' reply. Love. What is love? One definition is: a feeling of warm personal attachment or deep affection, as for a parent, child, or friend. You should be willing to love others the way you love yourself, yet first you need to love yourself, accept yourself for who you are. You cannot criticize yourself because God made you, and otherwise you are criticizing His creating skills!
So...
1) Love Jesus, put Him first!
2) Love yourself and your neighbours!
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The Love of God is so wide and deep that we will never get to the end of it.
ReplyDeleteFor me this means I can just keep remembering that everything is going to be okay now that I am His son.
Since I agreed (and daily choose) what He sent Jesus to do in his life, death and ressurection I have now been adopted in to His family.
I once was a foreigner to the things of Love but now I stand directly under it. His Love continually flows on me. I just need to continually stand under it and not sit down and look at it!
God is great and there is no shame to accept how we feel about things.
The more we share with Him (like you said on one of your first blogs) the more we involve Him in our lives.
Prayer is about blessing God with our attention. He is so jealous for us that He will use anything just to get our attention to bring us back to Him.