All You Need Is Love

“All You Need Is Love” Deuteronomy 6:1-8, Luke 10:25-29 Happy early Valentine’s Day; Abe Lincoln’s birthday is today; it’s post-Ground Hog Day; and, oh, I think I heard somewhere there is some kind of football game today! That’s right, today is Super Bowl Sunday! (Wootwoot!) My focus for today is Love, God’s Love! When I first started to explore just what was pressing on my heart to say, I knew I needed to speak of God’s love. I could have gone in a dozen different directions, such as we are to love God, God wants everyone to know how much He loves them. Or, we are to love one another; and another one to think about is that we are not to love human praise, selfish recognition, earthly belongings, or anything more than God. All would be wonderful messages, but for today I choose God’s Great Commandment. I just shared two different passages in both the Old and New Testaments. There are several other books where the Great Commandment is written, as in Mark 12:30-31, Leviticus 19:18, to name a few. The Great Commandment is this: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul and with all your strength, and with all your mind.” The second part of this commandment is “Love your neighbor as yourself.” What’s that again? And in Luke’s version he goes on and gives an example in the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:30-37). I will read it now…. There are three principles to be learned from this passage: 1. Lack of love is easy to justify even though it is never right. 2. Our neighbor is anyone of any race, creed, or social background who is in need. 3. Love means acting to meet the person’s needs, no matter where you live; needy people are close by, there is no good reason for refusing to help. The very end of the passage is what is truly speaking to me, the words “love your neighbor as yourself.” Just how do we treat ourselves? Standardly, we are good at taking care of ourselves; however, that is a daily struggle. We are created by God, in His image. If we don’t think much of ourselves, loving others will be hard. In the act of loving others, we must remember to love ourselves, not in a self-centered way, but by keeping ourselves humble and recognizing what our “role” is to be. Truly caring for ourselves is accomplished by following the Word of God. We are to love God with our whole being. God has given us His love, grace and mercy freely. And that is what makes us able and ready to love our neighbors as ourselves. He set this up for us to not fail… be successful. A quote on this is “God didn’t make no junk!” This commandment made it perfectly clear: love your neighbor exactly as you love yourself. Just what does that mean, and how can we accomplish loving our neighbor? This phrase is found in the Bible eight times... that’s right, eight times. It so important that it is mentioned eight times! So important that God makes it a command, along with the first part. He knew it would be to our benefit. We must do it on purpose, to be intentional. So how is this accomplished? First, we must receive God’s love and know that God loves us. Then, we must love ourselves as well, as was just mentioned. This isn’t about self-denial, but about the fact that Jesus valued us enough to go through what He went through. We owe it to Him to value what He values. We need to love what He loves. When we love our neighbor, it means showing grace. Planting the seeds of love. Loving your neighbor shows compassion. We need to look out for our neighbor’s well-being. It states in Philippians 2:4, “Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interest of others.” Just paying attention and doing what needs to be done, not to be a busy-body, but to truly be aware of others. Serving your neighbors is another way to show love for them. Serving from the heart is kindness in action. Random acts of kindness done with love in your heart is truly the best form of kindness. Speaking kindly to your neighbor and about your neighbor shows your love. We can always speak kindly to build them up and to be intentional with those words. Sharing words of God’s love is always an act of genuine kindness. Making allowances for other people’s humanity. How quickly in today’s world we criticize, are sarcastic of another person’s lifestyle, or just tear them down, judging their choices. True kindness needs to be practiced. We are all human and we need to recognize our own uniqueness. Sharing in our neighbors’ joys and sorrows is a great way to be an example of kindness and love. Grieve with them and celebrate too. And lastly, the hardest thing to do is forgiveness. Forgiveness is a big deal to God. I am quickly reminded that God forgave me/us, so to practice forgiveness with your neighbor is very humbling. It is an act of love and kindness. With all these instructions, I have a heartfelt thought to share. It is that each of us needs to follow the Great Commandment and to also practice the second part of that commandment. We are to follow this Great Commandment about love for two basic reasons. One is to help us love God; and two, to love others as we should. We, for the most part, do what God tells us to; but every once in a while, we are less than stellar. My message is this …That this Great Commandment, Mark 12: 30-31, “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: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.” This is a message that speaks to me of nothing but love. Practice this every day. You will be glad that you did! And, in the words of the famous Beatles song (sing it with me), “All You Need Is Love!” Rosalie