Could Jesus Find a Disciple part 3 Following Christ in the Modern Era (Loving God)

Matthew 22: 37-40 states that when Jesus was asked what the greatest commandment was, he said, "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself. All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”


Today we are going to look at what it means to love God as we are commanded to. Tomorrow we will look at what it means to love your neighbor as yourself. These are two hard to explain and even harder to complete concepts, if we make them that way. They are actually pretty simple to break down if we use the Bible as a guide (which is what we will do today and tomorrow). Furthermore, they are not as difficult to accomplish as we would believe. Instead, they are only as difficult to accomplish as we make them.  

What does it mean to love God with all that you have and all that you are? Let us first look at what love does not look like. Phillip Yancey in his book What's so Amazing About Grace uses a newlywed to explain our relationship with God, and it is one of the most powerful and easy to understand examples that I know of.

Imagine a groom talking to his new bride the night of their wedding, "Honey, I love you so much. You mean the world to me and are of the upmost importance to me. But, I have a couple of questions for you. Now that we are married, how far can I go with other women? Can I sleep with them? Kiss them? How about flirt with them, or just stare at them as they walk by? What if I spend the week with other women, as long as I am with you on the weekends? You don't mind a few affairs now and then, do you? I know that it might hurt you, but just think of all the opportunities you'll have to forgive me after I betray you!"

Do you think the groom that just spoke has the slightest concept of what love is? Of course not, yet many of us as soon as we get into a relationship with God begin looking for loopholes. We begin to wonder just what we can get away with. We ask ourselves how little we can get by with doing. Or we tell ourselves that since God's grace is so all-encompassing, we can just go on sinning and it is not a big deal. All of that is what love is not.

A true relationship, on the other hand, is completely different. You do not do things not out of fear of getting caught, but because you feel remorse as soon as you do them (or even think about doing them). The question you ask yourself is not, "What will make me the happiest and please me," but is instead, "What can I do that will make God happy and please Him?" When how you live your life is an expression of how much you love someone, that is a strong relationship. When you please them not because you feel that you "have" to, but because you want to is the type of love we are talking about here. The reason I do not cheat on my wife is not because I am afraid that she might find out. The reason that I do not cheat on my wife is because I love her and I cannot imagine hurting or betraying her in any way!

God has gone above and beyond loving us. God has blessed us with grace, and that grace is something that we should be grateful and appreciative of. I can act however I want now that I have been reborn, because how I want to behave is to please Christ. I am unworthy of the forgiveness and grace that I have been offered. I was a filthy vessel, yet the Holy Spirit filled me. I can never say thank you enough!

I can, however, show that I do not appreciate what I have been given. I show my appreciation through expressing my love for God.  Not living my life to please God, or finding excuses to do what I know is wrong is how I show I don't appreciate God's grace. If I do not act as if I appreciate God's grace it is a good guess that I am not in relationship with Him. Love on the other hand is expressed by gratitude, and my attitude of gratitude is shown by how I live my life.

My life is lived well when I know that I need God. Only when I can admit my flaws and ask forgiveness for my sins can I receive grace. Grace is a gift, and you cannot obtain a gift that you do not receive. I cannot be forgiven if I feel I have nothing to forgive. I will continue to sin, and denial of that will result in my not receiving grace. That said, intentional sin is not how we follow the way Christ expressed we should live. You do not cheat on your wife to show how much you love her. When you do make mistakes in relationship, you should let the person you are in relationship know. They cannot forgive what is not brought to them.

God always has His arms extended, but sometimes we choose to turn away. We choose to not show our love for God. God's love gives us grace, but our loving God is how we receive grace. The only way that we can receive grace is through repentance of our sins! Loving God with your whole heart, soul and mind is what inspires us to repent of our sins and to live our lives better.

The Bible tells us what love is in 1 Corinthians 13:4-8, "Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails."

Love never fails is one of the strongest statements in the Bible. It is also the end result of our following what Jesus told us to do. WE WILL NOT FAIL!!! Today we examined how to show God we love Him, and tomorrow we will discuss how to love your fellow man in the blog entitled: Could Jesus Find a Disciple part 4 Following Christ in the Modern Era

Sometimes When You Lose You Win

When I hear "Sometimes when you lose you win" the sound of Rosie Perez's accented voice resonates in my head. I really like sports movies, and White Men Can't Jump is one of those movies I watched a lot when I was younger. It is fitting that the movie would come to my mind, as it is a sports movie, when I think of playing softball last Friday. I got several reminders that I, in hindsight, needed to hear on Friday.

I am not making any excuses, but it was hot outside and we had a triple header! We had the 6:20-7:20-8:20 games for our triple header on Friday, and our two big hitters where gone. Oh yeah, and the sun was in my eyes, the team dressed in shorts, long sleeve shirts and ties to set us off and they heckled us the entire time. I have tons of excuses for our day, but I will stop making them now.

To be honest, our team beat ourselves. We did not hit well, and we had a lot of errors over the course of the game. Before this game our team was undefeated. I think we where 14-0. We were used to walking over teams, and would come into each game pretty lackadaisical. We had gotten cocky somewhere along the way, and I had not even noticed it. I guess that we needed a reminder that we were just like every other team.

We got our butts kicked at the 6:20 game. All I could do was be frustrated, mostly with myself. I want my son to play in a league that keeps score so that he can learn to win and lose, but I found Friday that I need to learn how to lose too. I beat myself up about the loss. I let it affect me. I even was at bat and got the last out of the game. It was in my head when the game ended.

As I walked away disgruntled to the second game of the night, I heard my team captain's wife say, "You guys needed to lose. You were getting pretty cocky. You had rolled over everyone and expected it to happen every game. You guys had stopped playing your best and were just playing good enough to win the last few weeks. This loss is good for you." This instantly resonated with me. She was absolutely right, and I knew better then to be cocky and to get angry. As a competitor and as a Christian.

Proverbs 3:34 says, "He mocks proud mockers but shows favor to the humble and oppressed." I had become prideful. There was a definite lack of humility in my life on Fridays. I had not even noticed it. It took a loss and my friend's wife to remind me. Galatians 6:3 says, "If anyone thinks they are something when they are not, they deceive themselves." For starters, I am not that great of a softball player. I am one of the weaker links on my team. I was getting a big head, and I needed the reminder that I was not that big of a deal. God is deserving of all praise, not me.

Obadiah 1:3 states that, "The pride of your heart has deceived you, you who live in the clefts of the rocks and make your home on the heights, you who say to yourself, ‘Who can bring me down to the ground?’" Who brought us to the ground? It was God by using a team that we had already beat 2 or three times this season. It was a lesson that I needed to learn, but it was not my last lesson of the night.

The team that we met for our 7:20 make up game was the same team that we played at 8:20. We beat them soundly the first game, but their shortstop made a couple of really good plays on hard hit balls and I got two outs the first game due to his glove work. I was still frustrated from losing to a team that we had beat several times, and he had an error in the second game. My mouth reacted before I could stop it! 

"You can't get lucky every play," I yelled from the dugout. My friend Kelly was sitting next to me, and he turned and said, "That doesn't sound like something you would say in your blog, David."  All I could do was look to the ground, partly in shame and partly because he was right and there was just nothing I could say.  

2 Corinthians 5:18-20 says this, "All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us."

That scripture states that we are to be ambassadors for God. He makes his appeal to people through us. Reconcile means to reestablish a close relationship between us and someone else. How am I to establish a relationship with someone when I am not showing good sportsmanship? One way that God makes a relationship with other people is through us, and here I am throwing a temper tantrum over losing and taking it out on someone on the other team? How is that beneficial to God or to me? The Bible also lets us know that what we have done to the least of man, it is like doing it to God Himself. When I mocked and ridiculed the shortstop out of frustration, that was the same as me ridiculing God.

As I thought on the night and the reminders that I had gotten from my friends, one of my favorite scriptures popped into my head. James 4:10 says, "Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up." I needed to regain my composure and remember that all that I am and all that I do is due to God, period. I am merely an instrument for Him to reach others through.

So once again, I was taught a valuable lesson. The thing that I need to remember is that I seldom learn life lessons from my victories. Most of the most important lessons that I have ever learned have come from my defeats and set-backs. Why get mad when I can get wisdom?

In closing I need to thank God, Felicia and Kelly not only for the inspiration for this blog, but for a much needed reminder of things that I already know. Be a good sport. Be gracious in victory and defeat. Do not ever get cocky, for all things are from God and God alone. The higher I sit, the further the fall. I needed to be knocked back down to Earth. Hopefully I will not need to be reminded of this again..................but I am sure that I will!