All For Love by MOPS InternationalSýnishorn

DAY 4: Learning to Love

Author Brennan Manning brilliantly wrote, "The litmus test of our love for God is our love for our neighbor." Love is sobering because it asks us to care for all people; even our enemies are made in the image of God and are worthy of dignity and respect. Loving our enemies is not an endorsement of what they do, it is an affirmation of who they are — God's beloved. 

What is something that you thought you understood when you were younger but you understand better now? 

I was a perfect parent, until I had children. I would watch mothers out in the world and think, “I’ll never do THAT. My child will never behave like THAT. My children will never dress like THAT.” I vividly remember the day I plodded through the snow to the grocery store with a tantruming three-year-old dressed in cowboy boots, swim trunks, and a batman cape. Boy, did I have a lot to learn. 

As we grow up and learn adult lessons, we give up childish things (most of them, anyway). And as we grow, we learn new things about love. We learn that love can be risky, difficult and frustrating. But we also learn what real love is - that it is more than just sharing your cotton candy or letting the new girl in town play Barbies with you (although that’s a start, and we would do well to remember that sharing is indeed caring.)  

1 Corinthians 13:12 says, “Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.”

Right now we don’t see the whole of life clearly, our knowledge is partial. And because of that, the way we love is partial and imperfect. But this verse is comforting to us, as people who follow Jesus, because it reminds us that even though our knowledge is partial, we are fully known and therefore fully loved. We are loved by the only one who can love perfectly. He is the only one whose love never fails. While we can’t love perfectly, we can still love boldly, in fact, we are commanded to - in what Jesus called the “second most important commandment.” 

The Jewish religion has hundreds of laws and devout Jews work hard to follow them all. In the book of Matthew, the Jewish leaders were arguing over which commandment, which law, was the most important. In Matthew 22:36-40, a Jewish leader - a lawyer - asks:

‘“Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” 

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. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets." - Matthew 22:36-40.

This was a challenging concept for the Jewish leaders to grasp, primarily because love is harder to measure than their laws about being circumcised or keeping the Sabbath holy. The question became, “How do we fulfill the commandment?” We won’t do it perfectly, but if we follow the greatest commandment of loving God with all our heart, soul and mind we will be a lot closer than if we don’t. 

CONSIDER THIS:  

• What does it mean to love God with all my heart?       
• What does it mean to love God with all my soul?       
• What does it mean to love God with all my mind?    
• What can I do today to love my neighbor?