Loving God Is Not Enough

Loving God Is Not Enough
August 20th, 2008
Are you shocked? Well, that statement is true and I stand by it. A very important person in history felt the same way. He talked about and preached about it. He said we needed to do one other thing. The church leaders of his day were shocked too. So much so they wanted to kill him. He was the target of a huge plot, carried out perfectly. He was betrayed by his own man, someone very close to him. He was eventually capture, tried (with false witnesses), and killed. He never recanted. Till the end he did what he preached. His last words, breathed as he was dying held the same message.

What did he preach we needed to do besides love God? Love each other. What was his name? Jesus.

This is not a salvation issue. Jesus knew he, and he alone was the answer for our sin. No, this is a life issue. It is what we are here for. We are to be loving God with all our heart, soul, and mind, and loving each other. God’s plan for each of us is to reach out to others. The idea of sitting alone doing nothing but talking to God day and night is mans invention. God never tells us to spend our lives that way. There may be times we do pull out of the mainstream to commune with God, perhaps even fasting as we do. That is not to be our lives though. Those times are only to prepare us to get back out into the world and make a difference. They are short times, to regroup and hear God clearly. They are not our main job in this life.

Jesus gave us the pattern in his own life. Serve, love , care, heal, comfort, and protect. Think of the last words Jesus spoke while on that cross. This was it. This was the end of his time to preach on earth as one of us. Yet what did he do? Did he yell out a few more rules for us? Go read it. He made sure his mother was going to be cared for. He asked God to forgive us. In his last moments, in the pain of the cross, he was loving people. All people. The very people who planned and carried out his death. He was speaking for them. He was speaking for those who did not even realize they needed forgiven. He was speaking for us. Love for man was on his mind as he was dying. Jesus died as he lived, caring for mankind.

Let us mold our lives around the example Jesus gave. Let us be about the business of our father: loving people. Hugs, Barbara