"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 first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself."
Matthew 22:37-39 (ESV)
God. I do not love you nearly enough. And my life is a testimony that I need that love — in the ways that I judge people, in the ways that I am selfish, in the ways that I stress and worry (mainly about myself). So Father, would you show me more and more each day what living with these two commandments as my guide and light looks like.
"If your brother sins, rebuke him, and if he repents, forgive him, and if he sins against you seven times in the day, and turns to you seven times, saying, 'I repent,' you must forgive him."
Luke 17:3-4 (ESV)
Yet when I see or hear of parts of the body failing to (or appearing to fail to) even attempt to orient their lives around living out these two commandments, Father, how do I rebuke them with love? How do I express with love that living in any way that isn't geared in this manner is essentially living in sin — living separate from you?
"The apostles said to the Lord, 'Increase our faith!' And the Lord said, 'If you had a faith like a grain of mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, 'Be uprooted and planted in the sea,' and it would obey you."
Luke 17:5-6 (ESV)
Lord, you respond saying that even if we have a pitiful amount of faith — the size of the smallest seed — we could even move one of the largest trees. Father, would I have faith that you will (as you have been) moving in the hearts of people, moving them and myself closer to knowing your heart — would I be reassured that even the faith of a mustard seed is enough for you to work in huge, powerful ways, Father, and would it be such a source of praise and joy in your handiwork. Oh would you fix my gaze upon your face!
Amen.
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