Loving God and People

I have been meaning for a while to start up a site for ministry purposes, but have kept putting it off. I decided I just needed to do something. So for one of my first blogs, I thought I should start with the rationale for the name of this site: Loving God and People.

The inspiration for the name of this website is of course from Jesus’ words in the Bible. A few years ago, while attending college, I was wrestling with the various principles, ideas, concepts, commandments, and more that I had read and studied related to God and the Bible through sermons, lessons, and lectures over the years. And I must admit, I was a bit overwhelmed. I came to a point in my time of prayer that I asked God, what do you really want of me. I really felt directed to the passage in the Gospels. Here is a brief look at the story when Jesus was dealing with some teachers in Matthew 22:35-40:

³⁵One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question:³⁶“Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?” ³⁷Jesus replied: ” ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’³⁸This is the first and greatest commandment. ³⁹And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ ⁴⁰All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

Reading this passage many years ago was refreshing for me. When it came down to it, what was most critical in my life was to love God and love people the way I loved myself! Looking at life through that filter, then, was helpful. It’s the “loving God and people” filter. I think we can all say we have fallen short of doing this in our lives, so I’m thankful that God loves us so much that He sent His Son Jesus Christ to die for our sins. And our response, then, is love. We love God by following Jesus Christ, obeying Him, and loving our world.There’s so much more to say about loving God and people that one mere website could never do justice to this idea. In fact, Jesus said that the entire “Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” Thus, probing the Word will help us get a better idea of what this all means.

However flawed our attempts may be, let’s seek to love God and people with everything in us. Through various means, I hope that the discussions on this website will encourage us to do so.

If you are reading this, you are welcome to include your thoughts on how people have or have not sought this out in life. And I do not think we have to be “super-spiritual” here – your thoughts may even relate to something in the news, life, the Church, sports, or whatever.