November 16, 2024 -- Matthew 22:36-38 -- Loved enough to love others

36 “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” 37 And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. 38 This is the great and first commandment. 39 And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.
Matthew 22:36-38 ESV

No doubt you know these verses quite well. Which one of these two commandments is easier? Is it easier to love God Whom you haven’t seen except by the eyes of faith, or is it easier to love your neighbour? There is a deeper issue that this text points to as well. Your love for the Lord your God requires the realisation that your heart is supposed to be a polished mirror, reflecting back to Him His great, ceaseless love for you. As you know you are loved, made strong enough by the Spirit’s presence in your heart to know you are deeply loved, so much then will you be able to reflect love from your heart to your Father in heaven.
 
Do you truly love yourself? Do you love your neighbour? Here’s an easy test. Imagine you have a dark secret hidden away in your heart, one that embarrasses you. What are the chances that you’d post your own secret about yourself on social media? What are the chances you’d spread it around your social circle? Nil. Nada. No way! You don’t spread gossip about yourself because you love yourself and you want to protect your reputation. Ah, now you see what it means to love your neighbour. You guard her reputation. You care for his feelings. You put a stop to the rumours going on about them.
 
That aboundingly rich love of God which has changed your heart towards Him also changes your heart towards others so that embraced by His love, you will see others with new eyes. You would not harm your own reputation nor gossip about yourself. Your neighbour’s good and his reputation is now as dear to you as your own good and reputation therefore, in view of Who God Is and His love for you and His love for your neighbour you carefully guard him as much as you guard yourself.
 
Step Three in the life of the Overcomer is this: “I decide to submit my life to the care of God as He guides me”. One side of that submission to His care is the daily renewing of oneself in God’s great love. Day 23 of the Overcomers Workbook has this title “Accepting God’s Love” (Overcomers Workbook, Canadian Bible Society, 2022 page 56). You can measure the extent to which a man or a woman or a child knows himself to be loved by God by the confidence he has in God and the kindness with which he treats others. One loved by God, aware that his life is drenched in the love of God, will lead a life that overflows in love and kindness to others.
 
Former addicts, and all those who were in the stranglehold of life-controlling sins, know the sweet power of God’s rescue and release. It is His love which broke the stranglehold of the Devil’s power and blew up and did away with our own warped devotion to the very things that were killing us. As those self-aware enough to realize these things, we are patient, kind, loving towards those who know God’s love and equally important we are patient, kind, and loving to those who are still struggling in the ways in which we used to struggle. Seeing their helplessness, and remembering our own, we long to bless them in exactly the same way in which we ourselves have been blessed. That is what it looks like to accept God’s love and in turn reflect it to others. We are just shining His love, the riches of it which we have received and to whomever we look the radiance of Jesus’s love for us spills out.
 
Father in heaven, I confess I am greedy for Your love to be poured out on me. More of it, gracious God, pour out more. At the same time, ashamed, I have to admit I’d rather horde Your love than pour it out generously to others in my life. Sure, maybe people who already love me or are in my close circle of friends, but to liberally cascade Your love over the life of others who are still bound in the enemy’s power, I admit it is too hard for me. Spirit of God, break down the dividing walls of hostility that deaden my heart; open me up to receive the healing downpour of God’s love so that from the vast reservoir of Jesus’s love which You have opened up in me, I will then easily, freely, and generously love others. Amen.
 
https://youtu.be/4-GM9w6IA2M?si=OR836shpRRIV4MeJ How Deep the Father’s Love for Us
 

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