WHY I READ THE BIBLE

Matthew 22: 36-40
“You shall love the Lord  with all your heart, soul, and mind.”

“You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

My primary FOCUS, my CENTRAL OPERATING PRINCIPLE in my life is to love God with all my heart, soul, and mind.  Then, and only then can I love myself…Then, and only then can I love my neighbor and everyone else.

Jesus fulfilled the Law and the Prophets by enabling us to be in a relationship with God as it was created to be in the beginning.  That relationship was broken by man’s failure to listen to and obey God.  Jesus reconciled that relationship by dealing with the breach of sin by dying on the cross as the sacrifice for that sin.  We all hear those words.  I believe them.

The entire Bible tells the Story of God, who loves those whom He created so much that He remains steadfast in His love even though we humans have continually rejected Him, disobeyed Him, replaced Him with our own idols built with our own hands, and continually went our own way, which always leads to disaster, of which He continually gets us out of.  In spite of all the idolatry, adultery, and breaking our relationship with Him, He continues to love us, watch over us, seek us, and finally sent His Son to save us once and for all.  BEHOLD, what manner of LOVE is that?  While we were His enemies He sent Jesus who died for us so we could be reconciled to God and live life as it was meant to be lived; in fellowship with our Creator.  Truly understanding and experiencing that kind of love should change us forever and instill in our hearts, should, and minds an overcoming AWE and a true desire to love and worship Him forever.

God is to be the main focus of my life and everything I do.  That is to be the main message of my life as a follower of Jesus.  God is to be the main focus, message, and mission of all who follow Jesus as we gather together, one on one, in our homes, and in our gathering together as churches.

The world today needs to hear the Truth, that God loves everyone and has done all He has done to walk in a steadfast and loving relationship with everyone of His creation.  That has been God’s message and mission along.  We continually hear that and know that and even commit to that, but then we fall into a pattern that has been fallen into since the beginning of time.

We begin to invert the order that Jesus gave us in His sermon on the mount.  The commandment slowly changes into Me loving me, Me loving others, and then stringing along at the end, Me loving God.  In the end that is idolatry and we lose not only our first love, we lose the power to love others and ourselves.  Then we become noisy gongs, clanging cymbals; we gain nothing and become nothing, just wind without air.  Listen to the daily news, social media, and all the chatter and you will know that is true.

The FOCUS is God, not us.  We are in the picture but the FOCUS is on Him; not our needs, our rights, our desires, our pleasures, our comings and goings.  God’s intention is to give us LIFE, and life abundant.  He will meet our needs; He is the giver of our right to become His children and to inherit the kingdom; He gives us our desires and pleasures.  We are created in His image.  We are hardwired to be “His people” and know that He is “Our God”.  As it was in the beginning it now and ever be.  Amen.

QUERIES

What does having God as the FOCUS and CENTRAL ORGANIZING PRINCIPLE of my life look like?  What can I gather and learn from the examples that I see, in Jesus, Paul, the Saints in Hebrews 11, athletes, Military leaders?

How will knowing the whole Story of God found in the Bible help with the epidemic in the world today of fear, feeling vulnerable, and results of

age-old societal humiliation, that lead to and results in hate, discrimination, and wars?