Lenten Reflection - Day 10, March 11

“Which commandment is the first of all?” Jesus answered, “The first is, ‘Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”
Mark 12:32-34

Additional Reading: Matthew 25:39-40

If you haven’t been able to read all the Bible yet, Jesus gave us a great summary of what it says in a passage that is now referred to as the great commandment. When Jesus is asked what God’s greatest commandment is he gives a reply something like this: Love God with all that is in you, and love everyone else like you love yourself.

If you are able do this you can be assured that you are following God’s will in your life. So often we get caught up in trying to figure out the small details of what God wants us to do with our lives, that we forget what the main thing is. I believe if we would sit and think about what this great commandment means it would help us to better discern God’s will in our life from day to day.

For example, look into a current relationship in your life that might be strained. Maybe, you dread having to talk with them about something they’ve done to you or you’ve done to them. In the great commandment passage Jesus is actually telling us to respond to others in a way that we would want to be treated. If you respond in a way that you would like to be responded to, you are actually loving and pleasing God. To me, this is a much easier decision making process than the good old “What Would Jesus Do” test, because quite honestly I don’t always know what Jesus would do, but I do know and understand how I like to be treated.

It is so interesting to me that the great commandment didn’t end with Jesus just telling us to love God passionately, but that he finished his commandment by telling us to love other humans passionately. I think we can safely make the conclusion that we are actually loving him when we love others. A lot of religious leaders in Jesus day dedicated their lives to studying, fasting, and praying to God, but they allowed these disciplines to give them a sense of superiority over the people around them, even touting these disciplines as spiritual merit badges, if you will, instead of letting their spiritual disciplines lead them into more compassion for their fellow human.

As we live out the great commandment, and we begin to be more aware of God’s constant workings around us, we begin to see things, and he open doors we would not have been able to see otherwise. Of course, God does use many other avenues to speak his purposes for us into our lives, but if you are like me and feel a bit spiritually handicapped in the God hearing department, I hope that you will find this great commandment test helpful.

Prayer: Ask God to help you understand in a greater way that loving him equals loving others. Ask him to continue showing you how to recognize his voice.