Thursday, February 5, 2009

The Greatest Commandment- Part 4

Jesus said that the greatest commandment was, "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind." What does that look like?

It means that our love for God should be preeminent. That is, our love for everything and everyone must be less than and because of God. Every desire and love must be inferior to and included in our love for God.

It also means that our love for God should be fervent. When Jesus says, "love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul...", the love he is calling for involves passion and emotion.

If you go to Amazon.com and type in "Passion for..." you will find hundreds of books with those words in the title. You will see that there are books called: A Passion for- fishing, cooking, mushrooms, knitting, chocolate... You will even find a book called "A Passion for Steam". I don't understand how or why a person could be passionate about steam, but there is a book about it.

In America you can be passionate about everything except one thing- your relationship with God. I could go to a political rally, a football game or rock concert and scream until I am hoarse. If my team loses and I cry, people think I am a big fan. If my team wins and I wave my hands in the air and jump around, that is acceptable. But, if I do anything like these things in church people say that I am a fanatic, a nut-job. One pastor said he had seen the same people scream like a wild Indian at a game and then sit like a wooden Indian in a church.

I am not promoting a shallow emotionalism. I plan to write about that in my next blog and talk about the fact that Jesus said, "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind."

What is my spiritual temperature? It seems to me that one reason that the gospel is not spreading very fast is because many who are called Christians are not contagious. And one of the characteristics of someone who is contagious is that they have a fever.

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