A Lover of God (January 4, "Our Daily Bread", Vol. 19)

You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart,with all your soul,and with all your mind.- Matthew 22:37(Our Daily Bread)

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The Greatest Commandment

³⁴ Hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees got together. ³⁵ One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question: ³⁶ “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”
³⁷ Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’^{[a] 38} This is the first and greatest commandment. ³⁹ And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’^{[b] 40} All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”


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A Lover of God
By: David McCasland
from: "Our Daily Bread", Vol. 19. January 4

In a brief biography of St. Francis of Assisi, G.K. Chesterton begins with a glimpse into the heart of this unique and compassionate man born in the 12th century. Chesterton writes; "As St. Francis did not love humanity but men, so he did not love Christianity but Christ.... The reader cannot even begin to see the sense of a story that may well seem to him a very wild one, until he understands that to this great mystic his religion was not a thing like a theory but a thing like a love-affair."

When Jesus was asked to name the greatest command in the Law, He replied, "You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the first and great commandment" (Matt. 22:37-38). The questioner wanted to test Jesus, but the Lord answered him with the key element in pleasing God. First and foremost, our relationship with Him is a matter of the heart.

If we see God as a taskmaster and consider obedience to Him as a burden, then we have joined those of whom the Lord said, "I have this against you, that you have left your first love" (Rev. 2:4).

The way of joy is to love the Lord with all your heart, soul, and mind.