Day 5
Love is for Everyone.
Christ’s followers had been overwhelmed in their day by religious rules —the best, most religious people, designing extra rules so that they could follow the Commandments that God had given their ancestors centuries earlier.
Jesus boiled down God’s intention behind the Ten Commandments - he realigned what a True God Follower looked like by giving his listeners two commandments to live by from that time on:
Matthew 22:34-40 NIV Hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees got together. One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question: “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”
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.’ 40 All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”
First, God invites us to live lives centered around LOVE. How? First He invites us to LOVE GOD with OUR HEARTS, OUR SOULS, and OUR MINDS.
Unfortunately, Love is most often defined by how we have received it.
Our love has too often been defined by In our broken world by divorce, conditional love, daddy issues, family hurt, sexual love, church hurt, wounded relationships… and even Lifetime Movies. —We aren’t so good at LOVE as human beings.
What if we allowed God instead of our life experiences to teach us what it means to truly LOVE? Then we could really LOVE with all of our heart, soul, and mind.
Secondly, God invites us to LOVE our neighbors as ourselves. While it might be easy assume we all know this, remember how hard it is to live this out. Jesus knew he had to address it with all of us as followers.
Generally, we lean towards loving people that are like us. On the other hand it’s so easy to look past the people that don’t look like, act like, or live like us.
But Jesus came For Everyone.
“Christ died for everyone. He died so that those who live should not live for themselves anymore. They should live for Christ. He died for them and was raised again.” 2 Corinthians 5:15 NIRV
What would it look like for you to LOVE GOD and LOVE your NEIGHBOR today? Together, let’s ask God to show us, to teach us, and to help us to live a culture of LOVE.
