One of the teachers of the law came and heard Jesus and the religious leaders debating. Noticing that Jesus had given them a good answer, he asked him, "Of all the commandments, which is the most important?"
"The most important one," answered Jesus, "is this: 'Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.' The second is this: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no commandment greater than these."
-Mark 12:28-31
When
Jesus was asked to summarize EVERYTHING that God has asked of all the people
that He created, Jesus picks just one statement as the most important
commandment of all of them. It comes from Deuteronomy 6:5, and it says: “Love the Lord your God with all of your Heart, with all of
your Soul, with all of your Mind, and with all of your Strength.”
I
don’t know if you’ve looked at a Bible recently, but it has A LOT of pages! It
is chock full of amazing stories, challenging commandments from God, powerful
statements of God’s love and support, and interesting quotes that really change
the way you think about things. Throughout the ENTIRE story, Jesus takes just
one sentence and uses it to summarize what it looks like to be a follower of
God. Pretty easy, right? If we want to be people that really follow God and
show love to our Creator and Savior, it seems we just simply ought to follow
this very clear verse…Well, maybe not so easy.
See,
it is so easy to quickly pretend that we know what we’re talking about when we
say we LOVE God. “Oh, you just need to pray and read your Bible and go to
church and be nice to people…right?” Well, that’s partially right. See, this
statement from God illustrates a picture of LOVE that is WAY bigger than just a
few actions.
When
you really break it down, what does it mean to LOVE God with our mind? How
about LOVING God with our strength? With our Heart, or harder yet, our Soul?
When we say we asked Jesus into our Heart, what does that REALLY mean?
Over
the next few weeks, we’ll dig into these questions to ask what it actually looks like to LOVE God with our
all! I hope you are as excited about this as I am!
See
you all on Wednesday,
-Brandon
For
you commenters out there, here are a few questions:
1) What is the name of your favorite pet
(current or in the past) and what is a way you show/showed them love?
2)
If you could create your own super pet by
combining any three animals, what would it be?
3)
Of these four (Heart, Soul, Mind,
Strength), what is easiest for you to Love God with? What is hardest?
