The Greatest Commandments

 “One of the scribes came to Jesus and asked him, ‘Which is the first of all the commandments?’ Jesus replied, ‘The first is this: Hear O Israel! The Lord our God is Lord alone! You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and all your strength. The second is this: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. There is no other commandment greater than these.” (Mark 12:28-31)

Love your neighbor as yourself. This has always been hard for me to grasp, not the part about loving your neighbor but the part about loving them as you love yourself. For most of my life I did not love myself. I didn’t think I was loveable in anyone’s eyes including myself and God. So I’ve always prayed for God to help me love as he loves, to see others with the love of Christ. This is where I draw my strength to love those that I find difficult to love. But I have had to learn to love myself and believe that I am loveable. I prayed for God to drive out of my heart those demons that kept me in darkness and would continually pull me under when I was beginning to be free of their lies.

I have a journal of my favorite scripture passages and several of them remind me of God’s love for me that he has had from the beginning. “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you; before you were born I dedicated you…” (Jeremiah 1:5) “You formed my inmost being; you knit me in my mother’s womb…my days were shaped, before one came to be.” (Psalm 139:13, 16) God is all-knowing, he knew everything about me, all my failures and sins, even before I was in my mother’s womb and he has always loved me. For the longest time I believed this about others but I didn’t believe it about myself. But God has placed some amazing faith-filled people in my life that have helped me to see that I am loveable. They have taught me scripture, the very ones that I mentioned above and many more that reveal His love for each and every one of us. Our bible is the living Word, God speaks to us through this living Word. The words written in Jeremiah weren’t just written for him but for each of God’s children. Christ’s resides in me, just as he does in each one of us, and it is through this understanding that I have learned to love myself and to love my neighbor as myself.