The Greatest Commandment

The Greatest Commandment

34Hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees got together. 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.'^[a] 38This is the first and greatest commandment. 39And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.'^[b] 40All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments."

I am betting that most of you that read this blog have herd this before but, I have just finished reading well listening to since I have the audio book and pretty much dislike reading a lot. Anyway I am not sure what I thought about this book over all but one part stood out to me and really challenged me and I thought that I would share that with you. That is wear The Greatest Commandment came into the picture the gentleman who wrote the book took an interesting look at it. He felt that he could not obey the second part of the commandment because he did not love him self. If he would treat people or talk to people the way that he talks to him self then he would be most likely have no one who would ever talk to him or be around him. This led him to figure out that he loved his neighbor better than him self a lot better. This really challenged me because I feel as if I can relate to this in a lot of ways.

Let’s just assume for the purpose of this post that I have no problem loving God with all my heart and with all mind and with all my soul which I do struggle with quite a bit but lets just say I have that down. I do not love my self very well at all especially right now I have not been loving my self for along time now. I put my self down all the time and I more often then not do not feel as if I should love my self or that others should waste love on me. I all ways feel that it would be selfish for me to have people waste effort and love on me when there are plenty of others who either deserver it more or need it more than I do.

Now it is important to understand that the problem I have is not with a lack of confidence I have but in an in ability to receive or accept love. I know that I am capable of many things and I know my strong points and the points that I need to work on. Now if I can not seem to receive love from others how one could assume that part of the problem I was talking about in my last post could be caused by this one. It can also be assumed that since I can not receive love from my self or others have I really received God's love into my heart or has my relationship with him been purely a mental thing and not a thing of the heart. From this one could make the jump that if I have not received God's love in my heart (even though I believe with out a doubt that God sent his only son Jesus down to earth to die for my sins) how is that I can share God's love with others. I am not sure but I see God working through me almost everyday in the lives of people around me.

I also can't help but think especially since I for some reason decided to write this on Valentines Day that my inability to love my self or receive love could be why I have not dated any one for real in my life time. I did however "Go out with" a girl in the 8th grade but that was not truly a dating relationship. Could it be that I do not allow my self to get to a place wear I can have feeling for some one and or receive feelings from some one else. Again sorry for the randomness and my inability to write well for you but these truly are the thoughts of a sinful man as they come spewing out of my head.