Excerpts from the first sermon of 2022 for January 9-16 time of prayer and fasting.
2022 Fast Days Devotional
Day 4 - Love is the greatest commandment.
Begin to love again. Put your energy into loving God and others. If we just learn how to love, and to do that well, so many other things will fall into place. So when we begin again, maybe we put more of our energy into loving well?
Jesus brought the same insight to those who were trying to live by following the law. Jesus reduced all of the commandments down to two.
Matthew 22:34–40 ESV
34 But when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together. 35 And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. 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. 40 On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”
So that’s it - Love God and love people. That should be pretty simple. Except that other people are broken just like we are.
Loving people is going to require understanding. Loving people is going to require our forgiveness. Loving people is going to require patience, because it is going to happen over and over again.
Other people are not going too learn their lesson until we learn ours. That’s why there are two commandments. You won’t be able to do the second, or at least not very well, until you do the first.
How is loving so central to living?
Or stated another way, how do broken relationships interfere with living life the way it was meant to be lived?
2022 Fast Days Devotional
Day 4 - Love is the greatest commandment.
Begin to love again. Put your energy into loving God and others. If we just learn how to love, and to do that well, so many other things will fall into place. So when we begin again, maybe we put more of our energy into loving well?
Jesus brought the same insight to those who were trying to live by following the law. Jesus reduced all of the commandments down to two.
Matthew 22:34–40 ESV
34 But when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together. 35 And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. 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. 40 On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”
So that’s it - Love God and love people. That should be pretty simple. Except that other people are broken just like we are.
Loving people is going to require understanding. Loving people is going to require our forgiveness. Loving people is going to require patience, because it is going to happen over and over again.
Other people are not going too learn their lesson until we learn ours. That’s why there are two commandments. You won’t be able to do the second, or at least not very well, until you do the first.