Unifeid Life of Love

The following video transcript has been lightly edited

The way we draw near to God in some ways is very simple, but in other ways is very difficult. So Jesus, having in a conversation with one of the scribes, and the scribe would be someone who wrote the scriptures but also would be known for being a great interpreter of the scripture, tells us that the most important commandment is not just one but two, that we are to love God and love our neighbor as ourselves.

And he joins those two things together. And so as we continue in our series of drawing near to God, we want to be reminded that the way we do that is by creating a life that is unified in love, that we love God and we love our neighbor in the midst of our every day. Now, again, that's something that it's like, oh, well, as soon as I perfect that, then I'm good.

But life is challenging and, like me, you probably believe that there's always more room to grow in this idea of loving God and loving one another. And so what I want to do is I want to help us and offer three practical ways that I think that we can do this.

The first is that we understand the one God and the scribe echoes Jesus words and says, you are correct. There's one God in the ancient world, there were many gods. There was a God for just about everything. Think of the movie Moana and the Demi God situation there, where there's all these different gods for water and fire and life. Here, Jesus is saying, no, there's one God. Now, you and I don't struggle with the idea of many gods in the idea of demigods, but I think we do struggle by inputting counterfeit gods into our life.

They can be a variety of things. Our children can become a counterfeit god, such that their achievement and success and well being means everything to us. A political party depending upon how you engage it could become a god in your life. Things like prestige and power and wealth. Anything that ultimately will fail us, that we put in the place that God is supposed to be, is a counterfeit god.

And so for you and I, if we want to live this life of loving God and loving neighbor, one of the things that we have to do is we have to pay attention to what counterfeit gods we might have put in our life. And one of the ways I think we can vet that out is by paying attention to what has our attention.

The things that we think about, the things that we invest in, the things that we wrestle through, those are the things that have the potential to be our God. And if that's in place, then we are out of rhythm out of sync. We will not be drawing near to the kingdom of God, but rather we'll be drawing near to the kingdom of whatever counterfeit God we have put in the center of our life.

And so what are you drawing near to in your life these days? Are you drawing near to the one God that has been revealed in the person of Christ who offers hope and love and joy and peace and patience? Or are you drawing near to something else? Are you drawing near to the idea that if you can just get ahead at work, then everything will be great.

Are you drawing near to the idea that whichever political party is in office is everything that goes on in life? Are you drawing near to the idea that if only your house could look a certain way, if only the kids could succeed in the ways that you want them? Push back against that and draw near to the kingdom of God by remembering that there's one God who's the ultimate source of goodness, joy, beauty, and wonder in this world.

The second thing we want to do is we want to be in sync. We want to match up. We want to be in tune with God. That's a practical way of loving God in our everyday. Think about it as musicians. Musicians, if they are not in sync, in tune and matched in what song they're playing and what part of the song they're in. It can be very difficult to listen to. If they're not in tune, it clashes. If they are not in sync, it feels like there's different tempos going on. If they aren't matching one another's energy and place in the song, it's all disjointed. Well, our life works similarly. We want to be matched up, in sync, in tune.

When Jesus talks about, loving God with all of our heart, soul, and mind and will. He's saying that the way to live life, to draw near the kingdom of God, is to have our emotions and our mind and our heart all lined up in a way in which we're in sync with God. How do we do that? Well, I think that in some ways it's simple.

It's connecting to God in the midst of the everyday and in the small moments. Brother Lawrence writes a book called Practicing the Presence of God, and it's this idea that in each moment, as we rise in the morning, as we go, as we meet a challenge, as we celebrate the joys of life, that those can all be done in such a way in which we're either giving thanks for grace, or rejoicing in an outcome.

We're asking for help because we find ourselves in a place of need. But if we want to be in sync with God, if we want to draw near to the Kingdom God in our daily lives, we want to do that moment by moment. So we wake up in the morning and we either give thanks for the life we have, maybe we ask for help, maybe we do a little bit of both.

Maybe we rejoice in the smell of that, the smell and taste of that first cup of coffee. And then as we go throughout our day, we see each. interaction in person as another way to participate in the life of God, that we would match, tune, and be in sync with the God of love.

The last thing I want to point out is that Jesus tells us that we are to love God and we are to love one another. And the scribe says, you are right. And this is really cool because two things go on. The joining of this commandment from Deuteronomy and Leviticus is something that in history had never been done. And to see the scribe who is known as an interpreter echo that is really powerful, because as Jesus enters Jerusalem, he's in a bit of a war with the leaders of Jerusalem.

The scribes, the Pharisees, the Sadducees, the high priests. And so here we see Jesus and the scribe go from against one another to together.

Now, this idea of loving one's neighbor is, in some sense, really hard to figure out. But in other ways, I would encourage us that it's really practical and easy. It's engaging need. It's being willing to communicate our own needs and responding to the needs of others. And that can be done in the simplest of ways. It can be done by encouraging, engaging your neighbor. It can be at work and noticing that someone's going through a hard time and asking. It's reaching out a hand of help, maybe it's inviting someone in or over.

Whatever those things are for you, open your eyes. See ways that in practical ways you can see needs and engage needs. See ways that you can communicate need and receive care. Because that puts us in step, in rhythm. with loving one another as ourselves.

So if you want to draw near the kingdom of God, as Jesus says to the scribe, you are near the kingdom of God. We want to be people who are about loving God and one another. And to do that practically, it's getting in sync and in tune with our daily rhythms and engaging practical needs. I hope this is helpful to you. Continue on in our series next week. I hope you have a great week. Take care.