Demonstrating love

Jesus said the greatest commandment is to love God with all our heart and to love people. The condensed version is love God and love people. Sounds simple, but most of the time we can't even get it right on the most basic areas. Two examples are provided in Mark 12 that illustrate this truth. The first one is from the religious leaders. Do not be hypocritical and give a sigh of relief that you are not one of those religious leaders, there is more of us in them than we would like to admit. The religious leaders of Jesus' day liked to make themselves look better than they really were. The point is that they sought the praise of men over service to God. Jesus talks about how they dressed to draw attention to themselves. He talked about how they loved to sit on the front row so that everyone else could see them. When a celebration or a party was taking place they always had to sit in the seat of honor. In other words everything they did was about them. They even went as far as taking advantage of the less fortunate so that they could maintain their position or status. Perhaps these words might be a little harsh for which to compare ourselves, but there is some truth in these words. Do we seek positions of service for ourselves or God? Do we draw attention to ourselves or to God? When people see us do they see God or do they us? At any time any one of us can be guilty of puffing ourselves up just like the religious leaders did in Jesus' day. In so doing we demonstrate to others that we love ourselves more than we love God. A second illustration gets a little more down and dirty. As a matter of fact most people do not want to hear about it and will turn a deaf year to it. I wonder what that reveals about us? Anyway, the next episode had to do with people giving money. The wealthy people were giving their spare change. The idea is that after they had provided for their personal needs, had paid some bills, and made sure they had adequate money in their 401k and of course money in the emergency fund and the college fund and the vacation fund they then dropped some change in the offering plate. The next individual came by before any bills were paid, not knowing how she was going to pay her light bill, how she was going to get gas in her car, how she was going to buy bread from the local bread store and she dropped in all she had even if it was a small amount in comparison. Which one demonstrated their love for God and their love for man? How often are we more like the first than we are the last? We need to make sure that we do not give God our left overs. We should instead give to God first and then live on what is left over. God will honor that, but more importantly we will be demonstrating in a very small way that we love God and we love people. How does it show we love people you may ask? By giving to our local church it enables the church to pay their bills and meet the needs of people. For the most part churches struggle to pay their bills and have little opportunity to meet the needs of people. But in a church that loves God and loves people this tendency will never be the case. Lets work together to make sure that our love for God and love for others is not just words, but with deeds as well. These are just a couple of small examples, yet I think they reveal much about ourselves. My prayer is that we will all demonstrate our love for God and for others in a way that God will receive the glory.