Monday, April 4, 2016

Honoring - Obeying

Mar 12:29  And Jesus answered him, The first of all the commandments is, Hear, O Israel; The Lord our God is one Lord:
Mar 12:30  And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment.
Mar 12:31  And the second is like, namely this, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than these

Jesus equates the desire for eternal life with the moral commandments, make NO mistake about that. Jesus told this man in the above verses that he was to LOVE the Lord thy God with ALL his heart, with ALL his soul, with ALL his mind, with ALL his strength.  And then He told him that he was to love others as he would be loved-one who loves God.

How are we supposed to love God with our ALL in ALL, with our Everything as average everyday people with jobs, families, etc?  God has to be ALLOWED into our jobs, our families, and everything we do.

We are to LOVE, and the LOVE we are to love with is God's love.

God gave moral commandments to explain His love more plainly in a way people would be able to comprehend.

IF we love God-- as we talked about yesterday, we will have…

No other Gods. No graven images. We won't take God's name in vain. We will remember God's holy day, the Sabbath. We will honor our father and our mother. We will not kill. We will not commit adultery. We will not steal. We will not bear false witness against our neighbor. We will not covet our neighbor's house, we will not covet our neighbor's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is our neighbor's. 

Do these moral laws make sense to you?  Can you find the love in them? If we are loving God with our all in all then it would be impossible to have any other god but God and we will not worship any object in place of God, we certainly wouldn't use our God's name evilly. And if we are loving our God we would definitely want to spend special time HE set aside for us to spend with Him.  If we are loving others - any other- we will honor, we will respect our parents, we won't kill, we won't cheat on our spouse, we won't steal, we won't lie about anyone, we won't with malicious intent want what others possess. 

Again I ask- do these make sense, and is there love revealed in them?

How do we honor God- we LISTEN TO HIM! And in listening to Him we OBEY, we FOLLOW what He tells us.

Can I honor God when I refuse to obey Him?

Can you honor someone and refuse to listen to them?

We can honor God in our everyday life in many, many ways!

More tomorrow by the wonderful grace, the marvelous mercy, the love of our God, our Savior, Jesus Christ now and FOREVER!

Amen.

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