Love the Lord your God – Love Your Neighbor as Yourself

How to live during a pandemic period

~ the Christian Faith Based view is dependent on our love of God. ~

God is with us. He will not leave us. He will not abandon us. He will strengthen us, give us courage, and He will help us to stand – NO MATTER WHAT COMES

What He asks of us is that we love Him with all of our heart, soul, and mind. He also asks that we love those in our lives as we love ourselves. During a pandemic, during any crisis, that may initially seem quite difficult. That is because we allow our mind to get ahead of us. We allow fear to creep in. We also know that when we are truly fully relying on God, He will give us the strength to endure all. Do not fear.

The One who makes this promise to us is the same One who created the universe. He knows the count of every strand of hair on our head. He knows past, present and future. God makes no mistakes, He knows no boundaries, He is without measure, He is infinite, and He rules His entire creation. He has given us free will to come to Him or to reject Him, but He will not leave us, He is faithful and true all we need do is turn to Him.

One of the greatest prayers that any unbeliever can pray is to pray that God reveals Himself to them.

What will be needed of believers during a pandemic is fearlessness. Fearlessness but not foolhardiness. H5N1 is one terrible virus, and there are other infectious diseases that we may have to work around.

I plan on helping my neighbors all that I can during any crisis that we may face, but I will use my God given intelligence to do so without bringing harm to myself or others. Going door to door aiding others without taking the necessary infectious disease precautions would be a short-lived sort of assistance, literally. We want to be able to love others for the duration of the pandemic, not just a few hours or days. Preparation is necessary in order for our faith based efforts to work in helping others. And what a blessed opportunity we have been given to be able serve God during such a time as this.

Comfort others in the grief, provide food and water to those in need, providing care for children, burying the dead…we will be needed. We will need to love our neighbor and demonstrate that love in real world ways.

This is why we do it

The Great Commandment

But when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together. And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. "Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?"

And he said to him, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets." ~Matthew 22:34-40

“On these two commandment depend all the law and the Prophets.”

“You shall love the Lord your God with all of your heart and with all of your soul and with all of your mind.”

The greatest commandment because without the first the second is impossible in it’s entirety and in it’s purest form.

“You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

Love the Lord your God

with all of your heart – our physical essence and the source of our physical strength. But so much more, the heart is life both spiritual and physical. The heart defines us by what we will and what we desire. Noble, brave, or wicked and depraved, etc., all are attitudes said to be defined in the heart. The heart is the source of our volitions. What I choose to do in my heart, my mind follows, and then my feet. The heart is where we choose the attitude that we will live by at any given time. Our mind may seek retaliation but it is the heart that quiets that urge and seeks love, patience and peace instead. The souls is where the hope lives that stems from the right attitude of our heart.

your soul – the essence and source of expression of mind and body. The soul is the vessel of the deeds of our body, the sum of our emotions and thoughts and the will and attitude of our heart. The soul is who we have been, who we are, and who we will become. It is where we take in the information from our mind and the longings of our heart and define them as our own. The soul is the ethereal imprint of our being and it is what we bring with us when we meet the Lord God. And we will ALL meet the Lord God.

your mind – Our intellect – where we use our knowledge of the world around us and our understanding and develop the attitudes of our heart. The mind utilizes the brain, the organ that senses the world around us and gathers and stores the information that we encounter every day and analyzes that information, the mind feeds the soul and controls the heart.

Love the Lord your God with all of your being. The Apostle Mark added that we are to love the Lord our God with all of our strength. All of our strength is implied because when we take the heart, soul, and mind, in their entirety that is our strength. Love God with your all, with everything that is you. Everything that is you.

The second commandment and obedience to it springs from and is an outpouring of the first. When we love the Lord our God with all of our strength, we will have the ability to love all who are within our sphere of influence, those who God brings into our lives.

There are two expressions of that ability to love.

We have a choice to make, non-believers and believers alike. I don’t tell others what to believe in, but I will tell others that I believe with all my heart, soul, mind and strength. In doing this, and in praying for the ability to love others my heart has been expanded.

We always have a choice

Either we can relate to others by ignoring them, by impacting them for evil or by having an impact on them for good. By ignoring others we have chosen the way of evil since we are not fulfilling the second commandment, to love others as we love ourselves. We cannot ignore our selves and our needs, nor do we want to. We have a drive to survive. So as believers our choice has already been made. We must shed our fear and our lukewarm-ness and become on fire for Christ Jesus. When we do that our passion to fulfill the Greatest Commandment takes all precedence over our lives.

"You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets." ~Matthew 22:34-40

 

These words of Jesus Christ were spoken in order that we may know that Deuteronomy 6 was a command that carried forward into the present day.

Old Testament to New – we are still live under the Greatest Commandment

Deuteronomy 6

The Greatest Commandment

"Now this is the commandment, the statutes and the rules that the LORD your God commanded me to teach you, that you may do them in the land to which you are going over, to possess it, that you may fear the LORD your God, you and your son and your son’s son, by keeping all his statutes and his commandments, which I command you, all the days of your life, and that your days may be long.

Hear therefore, O Israel, and be careful to do them, that it may go well with you, and that you may multiply greatly, as the LORD, the God of your fathers, has promised you, in a land flowing with milk and honey.

"Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.

Reading further in Deuteronomy we find more explanation of the heart state required then and now. This is the expression and what is meant by loving our neighbor as ourselves. Look how we are to love the sojourner, the fatherless and the widows, giving them food and clothing. Not because works save us but because we are saved we understand this command.

Circumcise Your Heart

"And now, Israel, what does the LORD your God require of you, but to fear the LORD your God, to walk in all his ways, to love him, to serve the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and to keep the commandments and statutes of the LORD, which I am commanding you today for your good?

Behold, to the LORD your God belong heaven and the heaven of heavens, the earth with all that is in it. Yet the LORD set his heart in love on your fathers and chose their offspring after them, you above all peoples, as you are this day. Circumcise therefore the foreskin of your heart, and be no longer stubborn. For the LORD your God is God of gods and Lord of lords,the great, the mighty, and the awesome God, who is not partial and takes no bribe. He executes justice for the fatherless and the widow, and loves the sojourner, giving him food and clothing.

Love the sojourner, therefore, for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt. You shall fear the LORD your God. You shall serve him and hold fast to him, and by his name you shall swear. He is your praise. He is your God, who has done for you these great and terrifying things that your eyes have seen. Your fathers went down to Egypt seventy persons, and now the LORD your God has made you as numerous as the stars of heaven. ~Deuteronomy 10: -22

Then, as now, there was a blessing and a curse associated with commandments of God. Obey or disobey, there are consequences. Early rain and later rain there are promises to those who keep the commandments of God….and to those who disobey there is punishment. We can lose our reward, complete disobedience to the commandment may indicate that we are not of the Lords flock. “Take care lest your heart be deceived”.

"You shall therefore keep the whole commandment that I command you today, that you may be strong, and go in and take possession of the land that you are going over to possess, and that you may live long in the land that the LORD swore to your fathers to give to them and to their offspring, a land flowing with milk and honey. For the land that you are entering to take possession of it is not like the land of Egypt, from which you have come, where you sowed your seed and irrigated it, like a garden of vegetables. But the land that you are going over to possess is a land of hills and valleys, which drinks water by the rain from heaven, a land that the LORD your God cares for. The eyes of the LORD your God are always upon it, from the beginning of the year to the end of the year.

"And if you will indeed obey my commandments that I command you today, to love the LORD your God, and to serve him with all your heart and with all your soul, he will give the rain for your land in its season, the early rain and the later rain, that you may gather in your grain and your wine and your oil. And he will give grass in your fields for your livestock, and you shall eat and be full.

Take care lest your heart be deceived, and you turn aside and serve other gods and worship them; then the anger of the LORD will be kindled against you, and he will shut up the heavens, so that there will be no rain, and the land will yield no fruit, and you will perish quickly off the good land that the LORD is giving you.

"You shall therefore lay up these words of mine in your heart and in your soul, and you shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall teach them to your children, talking of them when you are sitting in your house, and when you are walking by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.  You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates, that your days and the days of your children may be multiplied in the land that the LORD swore to your fathers to give them, as long as the heavens are above the earth. For if you will be careful to do all this commandment that I command you to do, loving the LORD your God, walking in all his ways, and holding fast to him, then the LORD will drive out all these nations before you, and you will dispossess nations greater and mightier than yourselves. Every place on which the sole of your foot treads shall be yours. Your territory shall be from the wilderness to the Lebanon and from the River, the river Euphrates, to the western sea. No one shall be able to stand against you. The LORD your God will lay the fear of you and the dread of you on all the land that you shall tread, as he promised you.

"See, I am setting before you today a blessing and a curse: the blessing, if you obey the commandments of the LORD your God, which I command you today, and the curse, if you do not obey the commandments of the LORD your God, but turn aside from the way that I am commanding you today, to go after other gods that you have not known. And when the LORD your God brings you into the land that you are entering to take possession of it, you shall set the blessing on Mount Gerizim and the curse on Mount Ebal. Are they not beyond the Jordan, west of the road, toward the going down of the sun, in the land of the Canaanites who live in the Arabah, opposite Gilgal, beside the oak of Moreh? For you are to cross over the Jordan to go in to take possession of the land that the LORD your God is giving you. And when you possess it and live in it, you shall be careful to do all the statutes and the rules that I am setting before you today. ~Deuteronomy 11

…and Deuteronomy 12 continues…

"These are the statutes and rules that you shall be careful to do in the land that the LORD, the God of your fathers, has given you to possess, all the days that you live on the earth.

“All the days that you live on the earth”

This verse has current day political implications. Stand by Israel. Another topic for another day.

And now, in the latter rain period, we are to live abiding to the Greatest Commandment. Jesus fulfilled the Law and as the Son of God, fully man – yet fully God, He gives us the power to fulfill the Commandment of God through the power of the Holy Spirit. The essence of God that indwells us at the moment of our new birth when we are born into Jesus’ flock.

I and the Father Are One

At that time the Feast of Dedication took place at Jerusalem. It was winter, and Jesus was walking in the temple, in the colonnade of Solomon. So the Jews gathered around him and said to him, "How long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the Christ, tell us plainly." Jesus answered them, "I told you, and you do not believe. The works that I do in my Father’s name bear witness about me, but you do not believe because you are not part of my flock. My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand. I and the Father are one." The Jews picked up stones again to stone him. Jesus answered them, "I have shown you many good works from the Father; for which of them are you going to stone me?" The Jews answered him, "It is not for a good work that we are going to stone you but for blasphemy, because you, being a man, make yourself God."

Jesus answered them, "Is it not written in your Law,’I said, you are gods’? If he called them gods to whom the word of God came—and Scripture cannot be broken— do you say of him whom the Father consecrated and sent into the world, ‘You are blaspheming,’ because I said, ‘I am the Son of God’? If I am not doing the works of my Father, then do not believe me; but if I do them, even though you do not believe me, believe the works, that you may know and understand that the Father is in me and I am in the Father." Again they sought to arrest him, but he escaped from their hands.

He went away again across the Jordan to the place where John had been baptizing at first, and there he remained. And many came to him. And they said, "John did no sign, but everything that John said about this man was true." And many believed in him there. ~John 10:22-42

Believe

Stand firm, and love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.

Loving our neighbor will follow when we give all of our heart to the Lord God and we live in obedience to Him.

visit my other blog: Prepared Citizens

 

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The United States Christian Commission

The United States Christian Commission was founded during the U. S. Civil War.

My husband and I are Civil War aficionados. Me admittedly reluctantly. I long for the day that we will study war no more.

Mostly I support my husband in his combined hobby of woodworking and researching the war. We have a home based business that supports the hobby (almost).

It is just something that we have been able to build and share together. I do the web work, the graphic design and such, and he does the building.

Doing research I discovered the Christian Commission. It seemed to just fit perfectly with all else that I do, pandemic preparedness.

Heroes of Faith during the Civil War

From Wikipedia:

The United States Christian Commission was an important agency of the Union during the American Civil War. It was religious in nature but provided as well numerous social services and recreation to the soldiers of the U.S. Army. It provided Protestant chaplains, and social workers, and collaborated with the Sanitary Commission in providing medical services.

The Christian Commission was created in response to the disastrous First Battle of Bull Run. On November 14, 1861, the National Committee of the Young Men’s Christian Association called a convention which met in New York City. The work of the United States Christian Commission was outlined and the organization completed next day. Two of the founding members were Vincent Colyer, who was inspired to start the organization after seeing the aftermath of the battle, and George Stuart, a well-to-do business man.

The YMCA and the protestant ministers formed the USCC. The civilians on the battlefield did not have weapons but just their care & love for the Christ. The original plan of the USCC was to help the priests of the armed services in their daily work, as the chaplancy program was in its infancy, with only some thirty members.

One famous U.S.C.C. delegate was John Chamberlain, who served on Little Round Top along with his brothers, Tom and Joshua Chamberlain. Louisa May Alcott also worked with the Commission, as did Georgia McClellan, the sister of Jenny Wade.

 

I have participated in a few living history events. And a couple of reenactments. I do have an appreciation for the hobby and a deeper appreciation for remembering lessons learned from history.

Campus Crusades for Christ has a Military Ministry. During a pandemic a civilian social service ministry would be a real blessing to many.

So I am praying mightily about this. I have been for quite some time now.

Technorati Tags: US Christian Commission,Christian Commission 2008,Pandemic Preparedness