'Sh'ma Yisra'el, Adonai Eloheimu, Adonai echad[Hear, O Isra'el, the Lord our God, the Lord is one], and you are to love Adonai your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your understanding and with all your strength. You are to love your neighbor as yourself" Mark 12:29 - 31(The complete Jewish Bible)
I just want to look at Verse 31b tonight. Yeshua(Jesus) says we are to love as we love ourselves. If I am to be able to go out into the world or even amongst my own family and love them, really love them I need to be able to love myself. This may sound easy, but look at the way I treat myself. I will often look at myself and see ugly. Yet God has created me beautiful. While I think this though, I will begin to feel this way and so begin to act ugly. How do I act ugly?
I start comparing myself with others - envy sets in, I am better looking than her, I am not as good looking as her. Envy then starts in other places, I speak better than her, I don't speak as well, I am smarter than her, she is smarter than me. So love is driven out of my heart. My heart which should be full of God's love is now full of envy, bitterness and strife. My heart needs to be filled with God's Love. If I cannot love myself I am never going to be able to love my neighbour. I can offend myself, others and God with attitudes like this.
I nullify what Jesus has done for me. He loves me! He loves me! Me, yes really He does. He loves me unconditionally, his word tells me(will look at this topic another day.) So if I continue in that sort of self talk of envy and not of Love then I am offending God.
I need to dwell on His Love for me.
I just want to really love you my Jesus with all my heart. Thank you that you are cleansing my heart. My heart which is deceitful above all else is being renewed every day and filled with the 'knowledge of your love.'
I just want to really love you my Jesus with all my soul. My soul, that infinite part of me that is joined to you, a spiritual joining. This is the part of me that confirms to my heart and spirit that I am one with you as you were one with the Father.
I just want to really love you my Jesus with all my understanding. Jesus this is what I am doing here. I am searching out your word and seeing how is it that you have told me and shown me what is Love.
I just want to really love you my Jesus with all my strength.
I guess this strength could mean physical, emotional and mental strengths. The physical - to speak out to myself and others that you really do love them.
The emotional - that wavery part of my being that is inclined to lead me astray. To inform my emotions not to dwell on the negative or offending statements, but to dwell on what is really true - that Jesus loves me.
The mental - use the brains I have been wonderfully endowed with by God and write, sing, speak, memorise, do what ever it takes to put this powerful fact into practice in my own life. Thank you Jesus PTL (Praise The Lord) Hallelulia!!
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