The practice of Love, of internalizing and then manifesting the greatest commandment, begins with my willingness to leave everything behind. And to simply love Him. How do I love in the difficult places? By remembering how He loved me... even to His death.
I am learning to love by choosing. And the number one choice I have made is to live with deep commitment to His word. To learn it. To meditate on and study it. And to let it soak in so that it fills me up so completely that it has to come pouring out. This work (and it is work!) is by no means complete... and sadly it is not some long-running thing I've taken on. While I've for a while been what one might call a casual student of the Word, I am now a woman on fire. Because all other things hinge on this. And He is good.
"Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength. These words that I am giving you today are to be in your heart. Repeat them to your children. Talk about them when you sit in your house and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Bind them as a sign on your hand and let them be asymbol on your forehead. Write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates." Deuteronomy 6:5-9
I've been studying these verses, and I've come to understand that I can be nothing apart from Him. My main objective as a parent is to help, with His Spirit, guide and shape these little lives on a path to becoming more like Jesus, and I cannot do it without His Spirit and His Word. And what I'm realizing is it is not enough, possible even, to "Love the Lord Your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength" and then to skip ahead to verses 7-9 and try to work them into my home. Verse 6 says that"'these words that I am giving you today are to be in your heart." This work begins with my own heart because 'to the degree that a person allows the word of God to fill his heart, the spirit fills his life'. (Lou Priolo) Yes!!
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