“…‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. 30 Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ 31 The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.”
Jesus was asked by a teacher of the law which commandment was the greatest.
They had been debating and Jesus was very good in His answers. So when asked this question, He responds by quoting one of the pillar prayers of the Hebrew people – the Shema Yisrael. “Love the Lord Your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all you strength…” Then He points out that loving your neighbor as yourself is the second most important commandment.
The teacher didn’t ask which was the second most important, but Jesus tell him anyway. Could it be that the teachers of Jesus’ day needed that reminder as well? Perhaps we still require this kind of reminder. These two commandments are just as true today as they were in Jesus’ day! When we love God with EVERYTHING we are and with EVERYTHING we have, we can begin to love those around us like we love ourselves. Isn’t it interesting that without love for God in such a holistic way, the love for others falls apart?
We see this all the time though don’t we? There is a lot of hate in our world today. Wouldn’t it be amazing to worship and adore God so much that we naturally love our neighbors around us? What an amazing world we would live in if we respected and loved one another because our first love was God. Even the people of Jesus’ day questioned who their neighbors were. In Luke, right after Jesus repeats the Shema Yisrael and speaks of loving our neighbor, one of the teachers asks “who is my neighbor?” You can almost hear the wheels churning in this man’s mind. Can we pick and choose who our neighbor is? Does my neighbor look like me, have the same interest as me, perhaps have the same skin color as me? Is “my neighbor” those I choose to associate myself with? The answer is NO! Jesus takes it a step further and tells them the parable of the Good Samaritan to illustrate our neighbor is more than people who look like us, talk like us, and have the same interests or cultural practices.
Loving God with all of our being broadens the world around us.
Loving God opens the doors to loving a broader sense of who our neighbor is.
So let me ask you, who is your neighbor that requires your love and kindness?
Prayer: Lord help me today to see the bigger picture in this world. I want to love you with every fiber of my being and every ounce of breath in my lungs. Teach me to love others, beyond my comfort zone and my own prejudices. Help me to show Christ in my words and my deeds today. Let Your love in my life be evident to all and my I bring glory and honor to you. In Your name I pray these things. -Amen.
The Salvation Army needs more leaders to be men and women of integrity. I say this for all areas of leadership. From the local officer position all the way up to the General. We need people who will do what they say they will do while being men and women of Holiness. Without the characteristic of holiness, a leader’s integrity cannot be completely fulfilled. Thus, leadership must begin on our knees before our heavenly Father. Because we will be held to account for what we do on earth. Leaders who operate with ulterior motivations and do not have holy integrity, will falter and perhaps inflict casualties within our body of soldiers. We are very good at pointing out the bad in others, but this godly principle of living must begin with us! Without holiness and integrity our sphere of responsibility and leadership will crumble and find a limited impact for the Kingdom.
or place of leadership and conduct themselves contrary to that place of authority? What we say and what we do should line up, and with it our REAL responses to the world around us. There is no time to be a phony leader or a phony Christian. We cannot have leaders of any level merely giving lip service to God, but their motives and conduct are completely contrary to their bravado. This Army needs more authentic leaders! We need people who are real, people who know what it means to struggle with life, people who get it. This army is in need of leadership that has empathy not apathy. We need more candid conversations and less brow beatings and starchy high pulpit speak. We have to have a spirit of trust and an understanding that our Army is made up of people who are fallible and require compassion and grace. We need more leaders who will go to the gates of hell for people and soldiers in need instead of delegating or sending others to do their jobs. The leader that can be trusted will come to your level and spend time talking with you about the things that matter. Can you be a trusted leader? Do you have a heart to serve? Are you moved with compassion for those you lead? Then be authentic, and leader with authenticity, this Kingdom of God doesn’t have a place for two-faced leadership.
Leaders who pass the buck are not leaders of accountability.
the power that is entrusted to you. Know that final authority is not you – but rather God. Even if you do not have someone who is currently over you in authority, your actions and motivations will be judged in accordance to Godly principles when we stand before Him. I do not say this to sound threatening or vindictive, I say this because I believe there are those in numerous places of authority who are power hungry and motivated not by a spirit of service but to be served. This is a very real danger in all levels of leadership. If we are to be leader who can be trusted, we must possess a level of accountability towards those we serve in leadership both above and below us (for lack of a better term). Is it still Thy Kingdom come, or has it come “My Kingdom come”?
This reminded me of another story. A story that Jesus told. It was about a woman who had lost one of her ten silver coins. This may have been all that she owned in the world, and losing just one of those coins would have been devastating to her. So she tears her house apart looking for this lost coin until she finds it. Then she calls her neighbors together to celebrate with her. Jesus told this tale to illustrate just how important every person on this earth is to Him. He doesn’t want to lose anyone along the way. In fact, just before this story Jesus told another story – the parable of the lost sheep, and at the very end of that story He said, “I tell you that in the same way there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who do not need to repent.”
This was more than coincidental, this signified God’s presence would no longer just reside in the temple, but He could be accessed by everyone all because of what Christ did on the cross.
Read the writings of Samuel Logan Brengle and General Frederick Coutts. Read Bonehoeffer, C.S. Lewis, N.T. Wright, Thomas Cahill amongst others. Do not limit your literary choices to just the Salvation Army world, expand your reading. In so doing, you will find hope, joy and passion of serving the Lord! A little warning too: you will also see where we as an Army can do better and greater things, so reader beware!
I think there is more than two certainties of Death and Taxes, there is also Monkey work. I do not say this to be critical or disparaging, I say this because it is true. We can become so bogged down by monkey work that we never really leave our offices and we stop seeing the mission of why we do what we do. Stop the monkey work for a day…get out of your office or your cubical and serve others. Do so in small and large ways. Take the time to use your hands for others instead of pushing paper…that will still be there when you get back. When we serve, there is something cathartic about it. There is something heartwarming. We have made contact with someone other than on an email or social media thread – we have touched the heart of someone in need. We looked them in the eyes, and was able to help in some small way. This can be done by even talking to people. Many just need someone to talk to, someone to be there and just listen. If you want to ignite or re-ignite the passion, stop the monotony of monkey work and help serve!
I have said this before and I will repeat it again, because I feel convicted about this. Perhaps you will disagree with me, that is your prerogative (thanks for your opinion, now here’s mine). Sunday mornings, if you are the officer or local officers and you have an active role in leading ministry – you need more than just that service to be your Sabbath! Yes, worship is impactful. Yes, connection and fellowship is vital. But Sabbath is more than just a worship service. Sabbath is resting in the presence of God. I would venture a guess that many do not spend enough time in solitude with God. Jesus took time away from His disciples. He went apart from them and communed with the Father. We too must find this type of Sabbath – even if it is for an hour or half an hour. Take your Sabbath, rest, recharge and re-ignite your passion! If you don’t it’s like never charging your cellular phone, it will be dead soon enough and useless. Stay connected to the Father. Pray often, let those prayers become constant conversations and make a concerted effort to take your Sabbath.
Rest assured, we need you! We need your fellowship. Make it a vital intention and priority to spend time with friends and fellow soldiers. Do not take these moments for granted. Together in fellowship we can face many things head-on. We are stronger together and weaker apart. Find friends and peers that you can trust to hold you accountable too. This ought not become laborious or a class, if it becomes that then it can lose its special-ness, and feel more forced. But find the friendships that make you laugh, challenge you, and makes you want to keep going in this Army! Sometimes these friendships might not even have an Army connection, and this might provide a fresh set of eyes and broader perspective on things. Friendship cannot be over emphasized here, especially when you are on the front lines in this army! We need each other to reignite our passions and purpose! Hold fast and make this a priority!
It would be easy to say that we would respond like the Good Samaritan in Jesus’ story, but is that really true sometimes? When we have deadlines to meet, appointments to keep, miles of road to drive to get to those “responsibilities” – would we stop what we were doing to lend a helping hand? How important are the burdens of those around us? Can we even see past the issues that we face in order to see the needs of others? It is far easier to put our noses back into our busyness, say “Oh I’m way too busy”, and never look around us. It is far easier to think “I’ll just let someone else take care of that person’s needs”…but what if God holds us accountable for those moments that we never cared or simply passed that responsibility onto “someone else”? Would that change how we look at others? What if God placed those burdens of others in our path so that we could help, but we didn’t lift a finger…could we really be called Christ-followers then? “For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink…” Matthew 25:42.
Pastor's Ponderings 