How should a follower of Jesus live?
When the Messiah Jesus was asked about the most important commands of God He answered: “Love God your Lord with all your heart, your soul and your strength. And love your fellow man as yourself”.
These two commands comprise everything that God requires of us.
Loving God means to:
Develop a relationship with God:
Praying is talking to God – not only in a formal way, but also from the depths of our heart. In praying we tell Him our fears, our doubts, our joys and plans. We confess our sins and receive forgiveness. We ask Him to speak to our heart. We tell Him our needs or the needs of others and know that he will answer. We thank him and give praise to his goodness, love and care. We learn more about God by reading in the Word of God how He is, what He does and how He revealed himself in other people’s lives.
Obey God:
We learn from God’s Word what God requires of us and can examine our lives to see whether we are obeying his commands or not.
Loving our fellow humans includes:
Meeting with other followers of Jesus:
to worship God, praise and thank Him, to read His Word and talk how we can apply it into our lives, to pray and to encourage each other
Forgiving each other and asking for forgiveness:
Forgiving does not mean to pretend that the wrong did not happen or that we haven’t been hurt. It means to willingly give up the right to revenge or nurse a grudge in the heart and to actively restore the broken relationship. It is a process and we need God’s power to forgive others
Helping and caring for others:
without expecting that people will praise us for our good deeds but that they will praise God for it. Jesus taught us to think of other people’s needs as important as of ours.
Speaking well of others:
To stop gossiping and spreading lies or faults of others. To encourage others, praise them, speak the truth and build them up.
Blessing others:
Wishing them well from our heart even if they treated us badly. Forgiving them, praying for them and leaving the revenge to God.
This lifestyle is not easy and it does not come natural to us. This lifestyle is costly. The price is to deny ourselves, our rights and our selfish desires. People may take advantage of us, mock and insult us, accuse us of all kinds of things, arrest and even kill us as they did with Jesus.
Loving God and others alone will not let you to earn heaven. We can go to heaven only because the Messiah gave his life for our sins.
Jesus gave his followers the love commands because they:
glorify and honor God
reflect how God is
are the way how God designed our lives to be