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 foremost commandment.” (Matthew 22:37-38 NAS95)
My love muscle needs a lot of exercise. I must work at it more than I would like. In that effort, I’ve noticed that I need to learn love. I know that can sound odd because at this point in my life maybe love would naturally overflow from me; maybe I would have mastered it by now?
God has drawn me to prayerfully ponder the meaning of this verse. Over the course of that conversation He pointed out the words, “great” and “foremost,” causing much consternation. What does He mean by putting those words here? Immediately Deuteronomy 6:5 came to mind, making me ponder more. What does God desire?
My awareness told me I hadn’t mastered love nor been mastered by it. So, my conversation with God developed. I had ample evidence in my life that I still had room to grow in learning to love. Noticing not so welcome reactions out of me as I interacted with my wife, or with my kids. Reactions, that if I evaluated them, I would say, there is much room there for love to grow. Admittedly, my family also let me know I had room to grow. They knew.
All this bothered me. Not that my family knew that I expressed non-loving reactions at times, but that I wanted to love and didn’t do it well. Yes, I could be loving, but love didn’t just flow. The feelings inside also confused loving others.
In all this, God said, “why don’t you just learn love from Me?” I understood at the time that God wanted me to experience His love. Drop my self-protection, fear of being known, and get real with God. Relate to Him as best I could, what churned inside me.
As authenticity rose in my prayer life, so did my experience of God and His love. God moved from a concept to a Real Person, who, when He touched my soul, transformed it. Never mad. God always willing good and desiring to grow my capacity for His love knew it would simply overflow in time.
I noticed changes. God’s love transforms. I am learning love and love now gets more readily expressed through me as a result. So, I understand my great and foremost need concerns learning love from God. I can only learn that if I turn to face Him and experience it from Him.
For Reflection
“All the paths of the LORD are lovingkindness and truth” (Psalm 25:10 NAS95)
- How authentic and relational are your conversations with God? What happens when you express your real state of soul to God?
- What have you noticed that deepens your experience of God’s love? How might that fit into your spiritual practices?
