Christian Living
When it comes to carrying out the two greatest commandments in our lives which are “ And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength. This is the first commandment. And the second, like it, is this: You shall love your neighbor as yourself ( Mark 12: 29-31 ) “ , it is so very important to begin and grow up into the first one “You shall love the Lord your God,” before you mature and begin to master the second one “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Otherwise you will be backwards in God’s order and design for your life. You cannot love your neighbor as yourself unless you first love God. Why? Because God Himself is love and we must come into contact with His love and have it shed abroad in our hearts in order to love anyone else (See Romans 5:5). God is all love and all Life, therefore we must be filled up to the utmost in our beings with His love and Life, and then to our astonishment, His love and Life will flow freely to our neighbors. Put first things first and the life you lead will come naturally to you because as the Apostle Paul discovered, “it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me” (Galatians 2:20 NKJ). Be a respecter of God’s order of things for the way He designed you to be and live, love Him first and the most.
This is important in our interpersonal relationships i.e., marriages, friendships and parent-child relationships. So many of these relationships today are sick and unhealthy. I do not mean in a gross sort of way, but rather you can almost classify some of our relationships as diseased. Why? Because we have put the cart before the horse. We have not learned to love God and grow in our relationship with Him first. It is only as we are taught by God in relation to Himself first, before any other relationship occurs, that we learn what true love is and how to interact in all other subsequent relationships, “But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you” (Matthew 6:33, NKJ). “All these things” include all our relationships in our lives. Remember, it’s in taking serious the order of God that leads to a healthy life.
Sin, envy, jealousy, lust, anger and bitterness are all a part of the man or woman who has not learned to put the first of the greatest commandments into play in their lives. Jesus comes to us and more importantly within us “to make all things new” (Revelations 21:5), if we will but allow Him to. He Himself through the Holy Spirit will teach us of love, how to receive and give love, and how to interact in a healthy, vibrant relationship with others, but again, it has to be done with Him first. The secret of submission, purity, humility and sacrifice which is so essential to all healthy relationships is always found in our relationship to Christ first, as He always was in His relationship to His Father. He will then put all things well within us and more than that, He will make us well. As Christians, we have no business stepping into a relationship with the exception of one with God Himself, loaded down with the baggage of sin. But so often you see where Christians do not take God seriously enough in this matter and they plunge into a personal relationship sin laden, holding onto the past, immature in the ways of God, diseased and sick in their hearts with pain, unforgiveness and a whole host of other things we have no business bringing into other people’s lives. Instead of being made healthy by God and for God, which then in turn we would be made healthy for each other, we instead seek out another person to make us well. But no other person besides the Great Physician Himself can make us well and healthy, thus fitting us for someone else, i.e., spouse, friend or children.
Have we ever allowed ourselves to fall in love with God as we have with a lover? Have we ever sought out a friendship with God as we have with our best friends? Do we fellowship with God as deeply and intimately as we do with anyone else? King David did. He knew God. I mean he really knew his God. Read and study his life with God and ask God to teach you how to have the very same kind of relationship with Himself that David did. Jesus died to make this happen.
How about parenting a child. Have we allowed God to Mother and Father us as we so eagerly do with our own children. We were created first to be lovers, friends, and “children of God,” then we were created to be the same for others. Is it any wonder then, that because so many of us have turned God’s original design backwards that many of our relationships are again, unhealthy, sick and diseased? It is so vital then to recognize that we have to be made healthy, cleaned up, filled out and allow God to begin hammering all of the sin out of us and by no one else, before we open ourselves up to another person and have a Godly, fruitful relationship.
I exhort all of us to allow God to be our greatest love for all time, greatest Friend for all time, greatest Teacher for all time and our greatest everything for all time. If we do this, then with our wives or husbands we will “cleave” unto them not as a controller, a hoverer or a smotherer, but cleave as He says we should do, as a nurturer, lover and great defender. Our friendships would also have a healthy respect, boundaries and sweet fellowship. We would no longer take to our children as ours only, but to raise and dedicate them to God, so they will be enabled to have a great relationship themselves with God. Study and read how Hannah had this attitude towards both her parenting of her son Samuel and towards God in 1 Samuel 1: 19-28. God will show you some very keen insight on how we are to raise our children unto Himself, by reading about Hannah.
Again not to beat a dead horse, but it is only God Himself who can give us health, humility, Godly submission, holy and righteous love, and divine meaning and purpose to all of our relationships, if we will but have this same relationship to Him first. He will then make and mature the essence of His sacrifice, and His display of love for mankind while on the cross, a part of us, of who He has made us to become, so we will be able to then take this into, and make it a part of, all of our relationships; loving, vibrant, healthy and the one attribute that our Lord desires the greatest we come into contact with for others, self-sacrificing. Seek to love God first and foremost, and He will make sure that our relationships with others will have the same essence that our relationship with God has, of course minus the worship of others.
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