Matthew 22:37-40 “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.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”
If God were to take you on a journey to Hell for a few moments, or to Heaven for a few moments, and then bring you back to earth to live, how would you feel? How do you think you would live the rest of your life? I don’t think this would happen to anyone of us, unless God decides to do it to carry out His purposes, but the reality is that both Heaven and Hell is real and every one of us will go to either one of these places at the end of our earthly lives. How we live our lives on earth is extremely important! In my opinion, it’s hard to convince humans by mere words, but I’m going to do my best to let you see the love that Jesus Christ poured out for us on the cross. Jesus died on the cross to forgive us of our sin so we can have eternal life in Heaven. He died so we can be set free from our slavery to sin, and so that we can live in peace and in joy! No longer do we worry about how sin can fully satisfy us (which indeed it won’t). No matter how temporarily good it may seem, it just brings disappointment and eventual condemnation to Hell. This unconditional love of Jesus is more than enough to make us grateful to live totally committed lives as disciples in return for what Jesus has done for us (2 Corinthians 5:14-15).
I want you to imagine something. Let’s say you had the worst form of the terrible skin disease called leprosy, and you are at the point of agony because you are constantly in misery of such excruciating pain throughout the day and night. Then Jesus comes along and heals you of this disease. Would you love Him in return for that? Would you live to tell others about Jesus’ love? Would you love your brother and sister in Christ? When someone is grateful of what Jesus has done for them, there are two things that they are willfully and wholeheartedly committed to:
1. Loving God and
2.Loving one another.
Love For God = Unity With God = Unified With One Another
Revelation 2:3-5 “You have persevered and have endured hardships for my name, and have not grown weary. Yet I hold this against you: You have forsaken the love you had at first. Consider how far you have fallen! Repent and do the things you did at first. If you do not repent, I will come to you and remove your lamp stand from its place.”
In this life, things come and they go. For example, I’m sure you’ve owned a shirt for several years and fell in love with wearing it. You would constantly be seen wearing it, from the first time you bought it, but as time passed, now that shirt is faded and has gone out of style. You just don’t want to use it anymore. Even when it’s time to buy a new shirt, the first day you buy it, you excitingly wear that shirt and you don’t wait for another day to pass by! Yet, even that shirt will fade and also eventually go out of style. It’s in our nature to forget about the things we first fall in love with. It gets to a point where we can have the heart of not even caring about the things that we first loved. It’s similar to
our relationship with God where we tend to shrink back and we don’t even care about obeying His commands.
We come to church on Sundays, to midweek on Wednesdays, to devotionals, to bible talk, we do bible studies, we share our faith, we fund raise for special mission’s contribution, and we fellowship all in vain because we have forgotten our first love. We get to the point where we just do works, and robotically want to obey God but there’s no heart behind our works; there’s no love left for God. We wonder why we grumble, slander, gossip, and live in contempt. It’s because there’s no love left for God. If we were in love with God, we wouldn’t have a problem following leadership that God has placed in our lives. We wouldn’t have a problem giving money for special mission’s contribution. Ultimately, we wouldn’t have a problem being “sold-out” for God and being wholeheartedly committed to Him (1 John 5:3- 4). If we don’t have love for God or His love is not in us, that means that we are like unbelievers who haven’t received forgiveness of our sins, haven’t received the Holy Spirit, and are still worldly. Since we know the truth and we don’t stay in love with God; it would have been better if we didn’t know the truth because it will be a lot worse on the day of judgement (2 Peter 2:20-22), (Hebrews 10:26-27). Why say any more than what has been said? We know what we have to do. Let’s return to our first love. Let’s make every effort. Let’s consider how far we have fallen, and repent before something worse happens!
John 17:20-26 “My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one— I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me. Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am, and to see my glory, the glory you have given me because you loved me before the creation of the world. Righteous Father, though the world does not know you, I know you, and they know that you have sent me. I have made you known to them, and will continue to make you known in order that the love you have for me may be in them and that I myself may be in them.”
From your brother’s heart! Love you all!
– Joshua Galindo
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