CHAPTER 1
Week 1: The Distracted Life
Jesus, I hear you calling me to love God with everything I've got. I want to do that today in a way that changes me and changes my world. I hear you calling me to love my neighbor the way that I love myself. Help me to love myself more fully and to give love to all that I encounter today. In your name. Amen.
Matthew 22:34-40
When the Pharisees heard that Jesus had left the Sadducees speechless, they met together.
One of them, a legal expert, tested him. "Teacher, what is the greatest commandment in the Law?"
He replied, "You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your being, and with all your mind.
This is the first and greatest commandment.
And the second is like it: You must love your neighbor as you love yourself. All the Law and the Prophets depend on these two commands.
Day 1
Matthew 22:34-36
When the Pharisees heard that Jesus had left the Sadducees speechless, they met together. One of them, a legal expert, tested him. "Teacher, what is the greatest commandment in the Law?"
I think it was the most important question ever asked.
The religious leaders were trying to trick Jesus, trying to trip him up with an unanswerable question. Jesus did not see this as a chance to prove his intelligence, his knowledge of the Law, or show his cleverness.
Jesus saw it as an opportunity to share with them what is truly important. In a life with many distractions, we can so easily run after things that are not of significance. Jesus' answer pointed them and us to what the heart was made to focus upon.
Loving God. And loving God large.
Before we examine Jesus' world-changing answer to the question "What is the greatest commandment in the Law?" I think it could be helpful to first consider what questions we have for God and our reasons for asking.
The religious leaders of his day seemed to be asking Jesus a trick question to prove to others that Jesus was a hoax.
Perhaps they asked because some really wondered of the true answer to this theological question. Perhaps some were hoping for an answer that could give life.
If Jesus was in your town today and you were afforded the chance to ask him a question, what would you ask?
What do you want to ask Jesus today?
What would be your motivation behind the question? Why would you ask this question(s)?
Jesus listened to and answered the questions of the people in his day. He is listening to you and wanting to give you an answer. The answer will always be love. He offers love to you and requires love from you.
Jesus, I hear you calling me to love God with everything I've got. I want to do that today in a way that changes me and changes my world. I hear you calling me to love my neighbor the way that I love myself. Help me to love myself more fully and to give love to all that I encounter today. In your name. Amen.
Day 2
Matthew 22:37-38
He replied, "You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your being, and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment."
Jesus' answer seems simple. It may seem obvious.
Some of us may even consider it revolutionary.
Religion has the tendency to become distracted. Not intentionally. In fact religion generally has very good intentions. However, we begin to make rules to keep us close to the heart of our religion. Then we make rules about those rules. Then people don't follow the rules, and there have to be punishments for those who break those rules. And then, without even noticing, the religion becomes about many human-made constructs that have little to do with what got the whole thing started in the first place.
Jesus had a way of cutting through all that with simple yet powerful statements that pointed people to the truth. His answer to a question that took into account hundreds of years of religion was simple, obvious, and powerful.
Love God. Love God with all your heart, soul, and mind. Love God with everything you've got.
We can sometimes more easily think of ways to show other people love than we can think of ways to love God.
What ways do you regularly love God?
The time you are taking today to read Scripture and pray as a part of this devotion is one way that you can be intentional with your time to love God.
How does taking intentional time to love God change the way you look at your day?
The most important thing you can do is love God. Don't push those intentional times off. Don't neglect to see how, even in the busyness of your day, your heart can be attuned to loving God.
Jesus, I hear you calling me to love God with everything I've got. I want to do that today in a way that changes me and changes my world. I hear you calling me to love my neighbor the way that I love myself. Help me to love myself more fully and to give love to all that I encounter today. In your name, Amen
Day 3
Matthew 22:39
And the second is like it: You must love your neighbor as you love yourself.
Jesus was asked to share his thoughts on the greatest commandment. What's number one? What's the most important? If we could only do one, which one?
Jesus answers by saying, "Love God with everything you've got," but he doesn't stop there. He keeps talking. For Jesus, you can't pause long between "Love God" and "Love neighbor." He says that the second is like the first one. They are connected. If you do the first one, don't neglect the second.
Samuel Clark is a ten-year-old in my church. A couple months before his birthday while looking at a magazine, Samuel saw a picture of boy his age in a faraway country that had a cleft palate. Samuel began to cry. He read about how without reconstructive surgery this boy's health was in great danger. Samuel asked his mom if he could use his birthday money to help a child with a cleft palate. I was with Samuel on the night of his birthday after he learned that he had raised enough money for five surgeries for five children. There was a look in his eyes that said, Anything in the world is possible. There was a large love in his eyes that inspired me to do more.
Oh, yeah I didn't tell you—I didn't have to. Samuel loves God. He loves God with everything he's got. His love for God and his love for neighbor are so closely connected that you can hardly tell them apart.
Jesus, when asked about how we should live, immediately told us to love God. He also knew that love would lead us to love others. Jesus was fed up with religious people who talked about a great love for God and who exhibited no compassion for their neighbors. According to Jesus, it just can't work that way.
How does your love for God affect how you treat others? Who do you think you might be called upon to love today in a large way? Which neighbor?
The love that you have for God will directly inform and empower how you can love those around you today.
Jesus, I hear you calling me to love God with everything I've got. I want to do that today in a way that changes me and changes my world. I hear you calling me to love my neighbor the way that I love myself. Help me to love myself more fully and to give love to all that I encounter today. In your name. Amen.
Day 4
Matthew 22:40
All the Law and the Prophets depend on these two commands.
The news tells us that our world is in trouble. Nations are crumbling. Violence is on the rise. There are stacks of food in one country while people in another starve. The economy is on edge. We think everything is okay. Then the next breaking news hits the airwaves, and we no longer feel okay.
The world is described as unstable, volatile, greedy, and unjust. Here's what I think it is: distracted.
God made us to love and b be loved.
When our world runs on money, power, oil, greed, or sex, then we are a world distracted. We were made to run on love.
Jesus said that everything hangs on just two things: loving God and loving neighbor. If we could get these two right, everything else would fall into place.
The world isn't a mistake; it wasn't thrown together haphazardly, but it is greatly distracted from its purpose: a people made by God and for God, made to love God and love each other.
What are your concerns for the world?
How do you think love might make a difference?
God puts the hope for a troubled world in our hands when he points us to the commands to love God and love neighbor.
How can God use you?
Jesus, I hear you calling me to love God with everything I've got. I want to do that today in a way that changes me and changes my world. I hear you calling me to love my neighbor the way that I love myself. Help me to love myself more fully and to give love to all that I encounter today. In your name. Amen.
Day 5
Mark 12:17
Jesus said to them, "Give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God." His reply left them overcome with wonder.
We are easily distracted. A recent study indicates that the effects of technology and multi-tasking have contributed to an ever-lowering attention span.
You weren't made to live a distracted life. You weren't made to have seventeen windows open at the same time, trying to attend to seventeen things at once and not doing any one thing well. You were actually made to live a focused life, a life focused on love.
Many of the people that were questioning Jesus were clearly distracted. They were in the presence of the Son of God and they asked him questions to test his knowledge of God's law. Rather than get to know him or enjoy him, they want him to do something for them.
One time they asked him a question about to whom they should pay taxes. They asked not because they truly wanted to know the answer, but instead because they wanted to trap Jesus in his words. They were distracted.
When Jesus answered such questions he always pointed them away from the technical question and toward the God who they needed to focus on.
If you were in the presence of Jesus, would you seek to know him and enjoy him or would you be too distracted to do so?
What are the big distractions in your life?
What would help you focus on your God given purpose (to love and be loved)?
Jesus, I hear you calling me to love God with everything I've got. I want to do that today in a way that changes me and changes my world. I hear you calling me to love my neighbor the way that I love myself. Help me to love myself more fully and to give love to all that I encounter today. In your name. Amen.
Day 6
John 13:34
"I give you a new commandment: Love each other. Just as I have loved you, so you also must love each other.
Most of us agree with Jesus when he says loving others is of utmost importance. It is the way that he says we are to do it that we have the most trouble with.
Love your neighbor as yourself.
In a life full of distractions we often look at our neighbors and think about what they can do for us. Now, we wouldn't say that, but our actions show that we think it. We get frustrated with the checkout guy at the grocery. We are angry with other drivers on the interstate. We are rude with our family members. Why? Because we look to them and wonder what they can do for us. Get me through the line quickly, get out of my way on the road, do your share of the chores. The love that Jesus is talking about calls us to stop seeing others as a means to our ends, and look at others' needs as if they were our own.
Love others like you love yourself.
Some of us, though, have trouble loving ourselves. If you have trouble with this, Jesus has something to say to you too. To you, Jesus offers this command, "Love as I have loved you."
Both "loving neighbor as self" and "loving as Jesus has loved us" call us to lift others up and consider the needs of others. We don't see people as means to achieving what we need for the day. We see them like we see ourselves and love them fully and wholly. We see them the way Jesus sees them, so we serve them and care for them.
We love the checkout guy, and the driver on the road, and the brother in our house. We love them like we love ourselves. We love them the way Jesus loves us.
What do you think it would mean for you to love your neighbor as yourself?
What would it mean to love others the way Jesus loves you?
Jesus, I hear you calling me to love God with everything I've got. I want to do that today in a way that changes me and changes my world. I hear you calling me to love my neighbor the way that I love myself. Help me to love myself more fully and to give love to all that I encounter today. In your name. Amen.
Day 7
Revelation 2:4-5
But I have this against you: you have let go of the love you had at first. So remember the high point from which you have fallen. Change your hearts and lives and do the things you did at first. If you don't, I'm coming to you. I will move your lampstand from its place if you don't change your hearts and lives.
In the Book of Revelation, the church of Ephesus is told that they have let go of the love they had at first. Another way of saying this is that they had forgotten their first love.
Jesus says our first love should be God.
With all the things that pull at our hearts and clamor for attention, God has to come first. When God moves down the list to second, third, or fourth place, everything else gets messed up.
We must change our hearts and our lives. Another way of saying this is to repent.
If you look at your life and see that God is not in the rightful place of first, then take some time today and repent, change, and ask God for help.
What would you want to say to God about your desire to love
God first?
What do you need to repent of or change to put God first?
Loving Large will require a primary focus on God that will then spill out onto all of your other devotions and relationships. God desires this of you. God requires this of you.
Jesus, I hear you calling me to love God with everything I've got. I want to do that today in a way that changes me and changes my world. I hear you calling me to love my neighbor the way that I love myself. Help me to love myself more fully and to give love to all my neighbors. In your name. Amen.
CHAPTER 2
Week 2: Your Love Keeps Lifting Me Higher
God, as I stop today to pray, I consider how extravagant your love is for me. You have sought me out and given so freely. You gave your son Jesus, so I could have life. Accept my thanks today. Show me how I can live a life that loves and gives in extravagant ways. In Jesus' name. Amen.
Song of Solomon 8:6-7
Set me as a seal over your heart,
as a seal upon your arm,
for love is as strong as death,
passionate love unrelenting as the grave.
Its darts are darts of fire—
divine flame!
Rushing waters can't quench love;
rivers can't wash it away.
If someone gave
all his estate in exchange for love,
he would be laughed to utter shame.
Day 1
Song of Solomon 4:1-2
Look at you—so beautiful, my dearest!
Look at you—so beautiful! Your eyes are doves
behind the veil of your hair!
Your hair is like a flock of goats
as they stream down Mount Gilead.
Your teeth are like newly shorn ewes
as they come up from the washing pool—
all of them perfectly matched,
not one of them lacks its twin.
Found in the middle of our Bible, tucked in between the wisdom of Ecclesiastes and the prophecy of Isaiah, is a love song. We often call it a book, but even its title tells us it is something much different from that. The song of solomon is just that: a song written between solomon the king and his beloved.
It is passionate, graphic, and moving. It is excessive at times. It is over the top.
It is no different than a more contemporary attempt by a musician to express his love for his lover. Love songs and romantic offerings are always over the top. The lover is trying to express a feeling in his heart that is hard to convey, so he uses exaggerated language and extravagant gifts.
People often wonder why Solomon's ancient love song is included in our Holy Scriptures. It says nothing of God, the Messiah, or prophecy. Why is it included then?
The answer seems to be that God would want us to know that there is an over-the-top, extravagant love that is pursuing us: the love of God.
Warning: When you begin to believe that God loves you in the radical kind of crazy, "I'll do anything" type of love that a lover has for her beloved, your life will never be the same. Some of us aren't even sure if God likes us! Some of us have great doubts that God would ever come close to us because of what we have done or where we have been. When you start to believe that God loves you in a pursuing love song kind of way, your life will never be the same.
Is it hard for you to believe that God loves you this way?
What hinders you from believing it?
God, as I stop today to pray, I consider how extravagant your love is for me. You have sought me out and given so freely. You gave your son Jesus, so I could have life. Accept my thanks today. Show me how I can live a life that loves and gives in extravagant ways. In Jesus' name. Amen.
