Loving God

I spoke not too long ago to my sorority about how to love God as you love yourself. The basis of this message was centered on the greatest commandment that is noted in Matthew 22: 37-39 ~ “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.” These seem like simple commandments, but there are so many details in each one that if even one is left out you are not fully fulfilling the commandments.

We can resemble our life as a candy bar. We all start out plain and simple like a Hershey bar. There is nothing exciting about this, it’s just pure ol’ chocolate. But when we add ingredients it makes the candy more tasteful and enjoyable.

In the first step it is talking about how to love the Lord with all your heart. So to make our candy bar more interesting we add some peanuts, which make this Hershey bar into a Mr. Goodbar and will resemble our heart. Our heart is the core of our personal being; it is what we are centered around. Without it we could not live, much less love others.

Once you get down the basics of loving God with you all your heart, you next add in some caramel to the Hershey bar, which makes a tasty Rolo. The caramel will resemble your soul. Without the caramel you are back to pure chocolate and would bring you back to the original you. But with them, you are showing love to God with all of your emotions, everything that you have inside of you.

Finally, you must love God with all your mind. This mind will be represented by peanut butter, like the kind in Reeses. Loving with your mind means with all the mental energy, strength, intellectual commitment, and determination you have. It is all the strength you have on both the inside and out!

Now when you add in the peanuts, caramel, and peanut butter to the original Hershey bar you come out with a wonderful candy bar, and my favorite, the Snickers. At this point you are loving God with all of you heart, soul, and mind. You have fulfilled his greatest commandment and are loving God to the most. But without any of these ingredients, you don’t have a Snickers, and you are not fully loving God.

So when you think about loving God, think back and take note to see if you are in proper balance in the way that you love God. Think about what your strengths in loving God are and make those weaknesses just as strong. God wants you to love him as He loves you, but you must complete all three steps equally in order to love Him in the right ways.