25 Days of Christmas - Day 15

25 Days of Christmas - Day 15

Recently we did a devotional on Matthew 22:37, the first great commandment, to love the Lord our God with all our heart and with all of our soul and with all of our mind. We have also spoken of God's love for us as a Father for His children. But many do not know how to equate this love from God because of their own heartaches and hurts in their growing years with their natural fathers, those who were to model a godly love towards them but did not. Even good fathers in the natural fall short of God's love and wisdom and therefore do not equal the love our heavenly Father has towards us. Without knowing God's endless love for us it will be difficult to walk in the fullness of what He desires for us and with us now. So be encouraged to build your relationship with help stronger and closer day by day.

Then in the past several days we have focused on forgiveness, knowing that we have to extend forgiveness one towards another just as forgiveness has been forgiven us by our heavenly Father through His Son Jesus Christ, our sins forgiven because of Jesus' sacrifice on the cross. If we do not forgive others bitterness will fill the heart where God's love and goodness was meant to dwell. Jesus told us to forgive others so that our heavenly Father would forgive us and so that we could be reinstated in right standing with our God and Father. It is when we come to understand God's love for us more and that out of His love He has forgiven us that our hearts begin to change. A gratitude of such a love towards us, an awareness of His grace towards us are sinners, that should place us in a position to forgive others.

The second commandment that Jesus gave was for us to love our neighbors as we love ourselves. I believe that as we love they obey the first greatest commandment a change takes place. As our love for God grows so does our love for ourselves, recognizing that Daddy God's DNA is in us and that even though we were a wretched sinner, He saw us worth saving. Whew! Now that is love, to love us while we were yet sinners. When my children were younger I was happy to hug them, to embrace them with my love for them (still enjoy embracing them and loving them!) but when they would come in all dirty from playing in mud I was a little more cautious about hugging them and would normally refrain from doing that until they were cleaned up. God didn't wait for us to clean up before He embrace us. And aren't we grateful for that!

Jesus says we are to love our neighbors as ourselves. Most of us are familiar with the Golden Rule, "Do unto others as you would have them do to you." That is what Jesus is saying here. Love your neighbor and treat them as you would have them treat you. Unless we have some major problems we do not want anyone to harm us. We want to be treated with respect and given a helping hand in our times of need. We want to be given the benefit of the doubt or at least the opportunity to explain a situation before conclusions are drawn. All we need is take a few moments to think of how we would like to be treated by others. Once having done this, we need to realize that this is how Jesus told us to treat our neighbors.

Please take some time to meditate on how we treat others. Does it fall short of how we would have them treat us? If so, let us ask for forgiveness for this to our Lord and, if the opportunity arises, to them. And let us ask the Lord to help us become more and more like Him, loving God as He does and loving each of us as He does, in Jesus' name we pray. Amen.