"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 foremost commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself."
Matthew 22:37-39
Excerpt from Family Driven Faith Chapter 3 "Learn to Love" by Voddie Baucham:
"Thus Jesus, referencing Moses, comments on the essential nature of loving people as well as loving God. Therefore, to limit this chapter to learning to love god would have been insufficient. If our homes are to reflect our position as the people of God in the midst of the opposition of a pagan culture, we, like the Israelites, must learn to love.
Our homes must be rife with the aroma of love. Those who visit us should notice immediately that they have left the world of self-serving, egocentric narcissism and have entered a safe harbor where people value and esteem others above themselves. Outsiders should enter our homes and never want to leave. Our neighbors should find excuses to visit us just to get another whiff of the fragrant aroma of love. The brokenhearted should long to be near us. The downtrodden and abused should seek us out. Families on the brink of disaster should point to us and say 'Why can't our home be like that?'
Unfortunately, this is rarely the case. Far too often professing Christians in our culture don't love better, more deeply, or longer than the pagans who surround us. At times we bear more of the stench of this world than the fragrant aroma of the people of God. That's the bad news. The good news is that things don't have to remain as they are. We can learn to love. The first step is to rid ourselves of the ineffective methods and ideologies that have led us down the current path."
Imagine what the church would be if we truly clung to what the verse in Matthew 22 is saying. Imagine how we could impact the world for Christ.
Matthew 22:37-39
Excerpt from Family Driven Faith Chapter 3 "Learn to Love" by Voddie Baucham:
"Thus Jesus, referencing Moses, comments on the essential nature of loving people as well as loving God. Therefore, to limit this chapter to learning to love god would have been insufficient. If our homes are to reflect our position as the people of God in the midst of the opposition of a pagan culture, we, like the Israelites, must learn to love.
Our homes must be rife with the aroma of love. Those who visit us should notice immediately that they have left the world of self-serving, egocentric narcissism and have entered a safe harbor where people value and esteem others above themselves. Outsiders should enter our homes and never want to leave. Our neighbors should find excuses to visit us just to get another whiff of the fragrant aroma of love. The brokenhearted should long to be near us. The downtrodden and abused should seek us out. Families on the brink of disaster should point to us and say 'Why can't our home be like that?'
Unfortunately, this is rarely the case. Far too often professing Christians in our culture don't love better, more deeply, or longer than the pagans who surround us. At times we bear more of the stench of this world than the fragrant aroma of the people of God. That's the bad news. The good news is that things don't have to remain as they are. We can learn to love. The first step is to rid ourselves of the ineffective methods and ideologies that have led us down the current path."
Imagine what the church would be if we truly clung to what the verse in Matthew 22 is saying. Imagine how we could impact the world for Christ.
3 comments:
so true! I love this image. Voddie has a way with presenting an image and saying "take it or leave it". I will take it! This is so very true I believe of what a Christian home should be like. However, it takes soooo much work. It's worth it. It is consistently living a life of servant-hood. We can do it with God as our guide.
Thank you for all the info you left on my blog. I am happy to have found yours now too! This post really hit home. I tried to click on the post you linked to but I think I got the wrong one??? Do you have the link? Or date it was? Congrats on #5:)
opps look at me I commented on the wrong post...My comment was for the Resolved2Worship post. Pregnancy brain!:)
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