Sometimes we make the Christian life too hard. Sometimes we are looking for answers or secrets to living life when what God wants from us is pretty straight forward.
In Matthew 22:37-39 Jesus tells us some of what God expects: 'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’
While this is simple to understand, it's not that easy to do. I admit that. Loving God involves our whole being. It involves our whole mind, all of our strength. It involves our soul which is our psychological being and it involves our heart which is our emotional being. Loving God is at the heart of what he wants from us. How far short of this simply-stated command do we come? How much do we even try?
The second command that Jesus gave in this passage is to love our neighbor the same way we love ourselves. We fall way short on that one too. But the challenge today is that when we're trying to figure out what we should be doing for God or to please God, let's simply go back to these two commandments and work on them. Let's focus on God and what he has done for us, be thankful for everything he gives us and make the effort to love him with our whole being. And then let's take the time to consider our neighbor and what his or her needs might be and try to meet those the same way we would try to meet our own.
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