As gasoline is indispensable to a car, so is LOVE in our walk with God. We need Love if we’re going to remain faithful, love for the lost, love for the work of God, love for each other and most importantly, love for God. When a car runs out of gas, it stops, it’s dead; unless you fill it back up, it’s useless. Likewise, when we stop loving God and people, we become useless, and spiritually dead.
In Matthew 22, Jesus got into a conversation with the Sadducees. After he had silenced them, the Pharisees came together, and plotted a way to trap him. One of them, a lawyer, tested Jesus to see if he knew what the greatest commandment was in the Law. Jesus, knowing their motives behind the question, simply 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.” Matthew 22:37-39.
Jesus understood perfectly the essence of all the 613 Laws. But, instead of valuing one command above the other, Jesus defined the law in its core principles: LOVE GOD WITH EVERYTHING YOU’VE GOT AND LOVE PEOPLE AS YOU LOVE YOURSELVES. The only way you can move mountains, and do the impossible, is if you live by this command.
The scriptures call us to love God with everything we’ve got and to love people as we love ourselves. This command shows us that, to love God, we need our heart (the center of our emotions), our soul (our actions, who we are) and our mind (where we think and reason). We need all of these components to love God, why? Because he is not physically here. But when it comes to loving people, He tells us to simply ‘’look at yourself, the way you would like to be treated and this is how you should treat and love others’’. Why is loving God different from loving people? Well, you see, the more we love God (heart, soul, and mind), the more we become like him (1 John 4:16), and the closer w e are to him , the m ore w e exhibit love. So, pretty much the way we love our neighbors (like ourselves) is a reflection of God living inside of us. So if you hate your brother or sister but say you love God, you actually do not love God! (1 John 4:20)
So what does this mean? We need to know what LOVE is:
1 Corinthians 13:4-8 gives us the perfect definition of what true love is. “Love is patient, kind, does not envy, does not boast, not proud, does not dishonor others, not self-seeking, not easily angered, keeps no records of wrong, does not delight in evil but rejoices with truth, always protects, always trust, always hopes, always perseveres, it NEVER fails.”
The bible says, this is how we should love others with a love that mirrors the heart, Spirit and mind of God. Can you honestly say this have been your heart towards your brothers and sisters? The reason why we fall short of this kind of love is because before we became disciples, our concept of love was worldly, selfish, and demoralizing. We looked to Hollywood to define love for us, with the happy ending, we thought love was about how someone makes us feel and how they feel about us, with you being the only one doing all the sacrifice. This left most of us wounded, depressed, and exhausted. So after loving like this in a wicked and cruel world, it left us heartbroken, guarded and untrusting of others.
When man deviates from God’s way of loving, the outcome is dreadful. God’s way of loving is not self-seeking, it’s not ‘’WHAT CAN YOU DO FOR ME’’, it has nothing to do with MATERIAL THINGS and it’s certainly not demoralizing. His way of loving is about how you behave and treat others, so that we can build unity among each other, genuinely keep friendships, marriages, and families together, and to show an accurate example of Christ to the world.
The Bible says in:
Romans 12:2 “Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.”
It’s time to renew our thinking of love from the world’s perspective, it’s time to transform our minds to love deeply, patiently and compassionately. Because we cannot and will not win the DMV area if we’re not exhibiting the love the bible commands us to. To do the impossible this year, we must walk closely with God who make all things possible!
– Michael Sesay
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