It was
twenty degrees this morning at 0645 when I woke up. Me and Louie (my 18-month-old Schnoodle), put
on our extreme cold weather clothing (him a Santa Clause tee-shirt and me four
layers of clothing that made me walk in a manner similar to the abominable
snowman), ventured out for our morning walk.
The sky was
crystal clear, and I saw the belt of Orion and Venus, the morning star, and as
usual, I thanked God for waking me up this morning, for the beautiful sky I was seeing, and for all my blessings,
and told God, “Father, I love you.”, in the same manner many of us probably do
every day. Of course, I meant the words,
but for some reason, still alone in the dark as the day started breaking, I
thought “what do I mean when I say, “I love you” to God the Father? Am I repeating them out of a feeling of
gratitude, and if so, what am I grateful for?
Or, am I repeating them almost like I repeat the Lord’s prayer at times;
just saying the words because I think I should say them because I have been told
I should say them? Am I repeating them
in a way that God really sees the love and gratitude that I feel, and do I
really honor the Father with my words AND deeds, which reflect the love and
gratitude I feel, in a way that He feels what I feel in my heart.
I pondered
those words during my walk, and then when I came home and started listening to
Dr. Charles Stanley’s daily message, I was rather shocked to hear that his
message for the day was “Loving God”.
When I heard that title, I realized that God was talking straight to me,
telling me that I needed to love Him as He loves me. But even more importantly than me realizing
that God was honoring me by telling me that He loved me, that He wanted me
to share what He was telling me today. As
I pondered why God would want me to share this message, it occurred to me that
this message that God has put on my heart today, and on Dr. Stanley’s heart today,
is a lesson that America needs to understand that our Government is totally
failing in demonstrating to our nation and the world. That failure, as Jesus says below, is why
America is failing in its role as standard bearer for goodness and
righteousness in a world spinning out of control and going to hell in a
handbasket.
When Jesus
was questioned by the Pharisees and the Sadducees about what the greatest
commandment was, His response was “ ‘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.”
The last sentence in those three verses grabs my
attention: “All the Law and the Prophets
hang on these two commandments.” As I
interpret that, Jesus is telling us that everything else in the Bible is
dependent upon us understanding and obeying those two commandments. He is saying that if we do not Love the Lord
our God with all our hearts and with all our souls and all our minds, then
everything else we do is just “going through the motions”, and not truly
understanding why we are doing something, why it is important that we do God’s
will, and what all of this means in our time while we are here on earth.
I have had many leadership positions in my life in the
military, working for others, and in my church life, but probably none more
important that my roles as a father and husband. One of the most important lessons I learned
as a leader, however, was that to be truly successful as a leader, I needed to
be sure that those in my charge understood not only what I was asking them to
do, but more importantly why I was asking them to do something. I learned that in helping those I led to see
the “big picture” as best I could, then they began to understand what their
role was in that big picture, and why their role was so important and where and
how completing their role successfully made the completion of the overall
mission successfully possible.
God is doing the same thing when He tells us that in loving
Him and loving our neighbors as ourselves, we are setting the foundation upon
which the rest of the world has an opportunity to a demonstration of how God
loves everyone and has a plan for each one of us to maximize our impact on His
mission through Christ to save us all from Satan’s condemnation for all
eternity for those who do not accept Jesus Christ as their savior. Just as a soldier or a worker perform their
job better when they understand how important their job is to the overall
successful completion of the “big picture” plan of their leaders, so we as
Christians, by loving God as He instructs us to, will be able to more
effectively communicate to others how God loved us so very much that He
willingly sacrificed His only begotten Son on the cross of Calvary to become
our Messiah, our pathway out of this sinful world into an eternity of bliss in
the presence of the God of everything.
As I examine my own love for God, I realize I fall short of
loving Him like I should, and because of that, I am missing out on many of the
blessings that God wants to show me here on this earth before I close my eyes
in death and go to Heaven. And though I
cannot go back and regain all the blessings I have lost thus far, as Paul says
in Philippians 3:12-14: “12 Not
that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my
goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took
hold of me. 13 Brothers
and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one
thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, 14 I press on toward the goal to win the
prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.”
Pressing on; putting in the past the mistakes
I have made, the regrets for what I have and have not done, I will continue to
pray, I will continue to read and listen to God’s word and seek with my heart
and soul and mind to love God above everything in this world. For I believe if I can stay firm on that
path, God will feel that love from me, feel the gratitude that comes from
understanding how deeply He loves me, feel the gratitude that comes from Him
drawing me closer to Himself, and eventually Him showing me ways to better
serve Him while I am on this earth. This
is how I need to show my love to my Heavenly Father, and how I hope to fully
feel and understand the love my Heavenly Father has for me. With that, will come a deeper understanding
of the how blessed I am, and I am confident that will allow me to better show
my love for my Savior and Heavenly Father in a manner that will please Him. He deserves that if for no other reasons than
what He sacrificed through His son Jesus, my Messiah, so that I have the
opportunity to spend eternity in Heaven with Him and not be condemned to hell
with Satan for all eternity. All blessings
beyond that are just gravy.
Finally, I believe that God is telling Americas that we, as
Johnny Lee once said in a famous country song, are “Looking for Love in all the
wrong places”. Those Americans looking
for love and peace through political power, through financial wealth, through
strategic alliances between companies and other countries, through personal relationships,
and any other way that one can conceive of, will not find it in those
ways. Our politicians and judges today have turned their backs on God's word and adjudicated God out of the Government almost completely. That is NOT what the founding fathers envisioned and provided for in our Constitution and Bill of Rights, and if anyone says otherwise, they are either lying or ignorant of who the founding fathers really were and what they really believed about the necessity of our government system being based on Christian principles, and faith in God and Christ being the foundation upon which the nation would prosper. True peace and love and harmony in
this world are never going to be found until we, as individuals, businesses,
states, and nations, first learn to love God as Jesus instructed above. Jesus promises us that if we do that,
everything else will fall into place, because “’All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two
commandments.”
