What is the greatest Command?

What the greatest command has to do with all the churches Failing.

1. Why do we think that our Churches are failing? One of my reasons is I think that we have started leaning farther and farther away of coming for the right reasons! What i mean by this is that i think churches in general have stopped coming to be united in the Lord! We are coming maybe simply to see what someone else is doing or maybe were coming to check it off of our spiritual checklist. Or maybe we are coming to sing a few songs that we think will check off our ( worship) time, but i think if we are going to get back to being a thriving church and a church that reaches the Lost we HAVE got to make the main thing the main thing again and that is to Love God and truly honor and worship him and to Love the people he has put around us! If we look at Mark Chapter 12: 30-31. We will see one of the ways i think that we can become a thriving church again.

2. Lets see what this verse has to do with our churches being able to do good!

Lets actually look back into verse 29, This is Jesus talking the very first word is Listen! Jesus is speaking and telling Isreal which was the Chosen people! and Listen if were “ Christians” we have to know as well that we are Chosen people as well! But Jesus is telling them to Listen which i think were not doing very well of today! Lets see what he is telling us to listen too! He is telling us that The Lord our God is the one and Only Lord!

So how come its so hard for us to believe that? We should put all of our trust in Him, but yet were out here putting all our faith in people or polictis and money when they cant do anything or us! and when people come to get help from us were doing everything except leading them into the presence of the Lord. Were acting as if we are the Lord and we can fix peoples problems when we cant even fix our own! Were not trusting that God is who he says he is!

3. Look at verse 30.

Jesus tells us that we MUST love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and all of our strength! Do you know what the word must is? Its a command! Lets think if you have kids or if you’ve ever watched kids and you tell them that they Must do something we expect them to do it right? well how come we don’t do that when it comes to God?

What i mean by this how do we usually react when something don’t go our way? We usually react in a negative way. Or at least i do. We tend to blame God and get angry with Him because He didnt make our plan go exactly the way we want, and we tend to forget Romans 8:28 ( And Everything works together for the Good of those who Love God and are called according to His Purpose) we see again for God to work things out we still have to Love Him!

What are some things that we Love? Probably some of the things that i would Love with all of my might are God, my wife, this Church, my family, sports. But know what happens if i love those more than God? They are going to fail, because they cant do anything for me. They are mortal that means if i have all my trust in them they’re not perfect like our God. So lets get into Loving God with all of our soul mind and heart and with everything we have! This will make our church strive and be Good in the eyes of the Lord!

4. Lets look at verse 31 now.

Jesus goes on to say that this is equally as important, so everything that we just talked about about how we are supposed to Love God with all our heart soul strength and might! This is Just as important! Love your neighbor as yourself! No other command is greater than these!

Now Lets talk do you think that hes simply talking about our physical neighbor, yes and no you see my neighbors are my in-laws so i better loves those right! and some of y'all may have neighbors that y'all love dearly, and some that it may be difficult to love! I don’t think that Jesus is simply talking about our physical ones but any person that we come in contact with us. But here as of late. We ( all Americans) seem to Love to hate each other if im being honest. We can see it all the way from the top to the bottom. We see that the left don't like the right, Christians aren't loving the world and the world isn't loving the Christians. We even have people inside of churches not loving one another......that's whats sad...... because do you know who Jesus came to die for and who Jesus loves? He Loves EVERYONE. We are all called to the same purpose and that to Love God and to love His People.

If we truly want to be a Church that God Will use and bless, Then we have to put our differences aside and Love God and His people ( even the ones we don't like) WE have got to do better about being together and being united as one and Go out and show the Love for God and the Love for His people and i truly believe that God will bless us and he will bless this Church and all the other Churches if We Love Him and get rid of all this hate that we have for one another!

I want to end this on a positive note!

Have any of you seen on Facebook or the news about the School called Asbury university in Kentucky? If you haven't heard they started a chapel service at 10 on Wednesday and its still going. They are people from all over Kentucky that is going and seeing the Lord Move. as of Saturday it has been going on for 77 hours! can you even fathom that? a bunch of college kids getting on fire for Jesus! i truly think this world is almost ready for that! but you know what we have to come to the realization of, Is that we need Jesus so bad in our lives that we know we cant do anything without Him and his Love. I think for us to do that we have to start by loving God with all that we have and he might Just break revival out right here! LETS PRAY!