Deuteronomy 6:5 (NIV) - Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.Today at church, we had a guest preacher, and his sermon was entitled
"The Most Important Thing". It was about Deuteronomy 6 and focused on verse 5, shown above. Moses knew that his time was coming to an end, and the Israelites were about to cross over into the Promised Land. He was repeating the Ten Commandments to them, making sure that they understood them before he was gone. In Deut. 6, he summed up the entirety of their faith in this one sentence: Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.
Pretty simple. I really liked how this tied in with my post last Sunday about how easily John 3:16,17 sums up the Christian faith. I see it this way:
John 3:16,17 tells us the "what" of what we believe, and Deut. 6:5 tells us the how. Today's sermon confirmed to me that
God is telling me to go back to basics with my faith. For the past year or so, I've dug and dug and dug, trying to figure out every single little "important" detail about the Christian faith, and even more specific, the Lutheran faith, and even MORE specific, the ELCA Lutheran beliefs (oh, what a downward spiral!) When we started going to this Lutheran church, I was so persistent to ensure that their beliefs were parallel with my own, that I found myself spending more time researching things like infant baptism and the Real Presence, that
I forgot to just spend time with the Lord. I forgot to ask Him to show me the way, to show me which of the "technicalities" He thinks are important, to show me what He wants me to do for Him. I spent less time in prayer and more time digging, looking, searching for answers that I now realize I won't know the definitive answer to until I meet Jesus face to face at the end of my life.
God wants something different from me. The little things are important, but He's telling me that they're not near as important as I am making them. God is reminding me of The Most Important Thing: That I need to love Him with all my heart and with all my soul and with all my strength. He'll handle the rest.
Comments (6)
I agree. Sometimes we get so concerned with the minor denominational differences that we forget that we all serve the same all powerful, all knowing, all present God.
Well said. ~ L
Often we get so tied up with arguing technicalities and proving others wrong that we forget the very basic. And yet, God has made it so clear and simple. Good post!
Amen. Thank you for writing this
Awesome! Sorry it took so long to reply ;) it's good to have a system, a rhyme and a reason, for the things we're memorizing. Keep it up! I love to hear from you about what God is teaching you and doing in your life! God bless, He loves you so much! :D
Great post Shana, great post. Sometime we spend to much time worrying about the tangible, that we forget about the intangible. This entry touched me deeply; hopefully I will start living right soon. Help me please! Whatever it takes, give me advice, you're supposed to spread the messege, dont you feel it?