Loving Jesus More than Anything

Loving Jesus More than Anything

Loving Jesus above all flowingfaith.comI love Jesus. How could I not, right? He died for me and gave me a chance to be made right with God. Loving Jesus is a no-brainer to me. How about you? It gets tough when we are told in the Bible to love God and Jesus above all. More than ourselves. Even more than our kids. And even more than life itself. Ouch. Loving Jesus more than anything does not come naturally to us.

Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” (Matthew 22:37-40, NIV)

 “He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me; and he who loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me. And he who does not take his cross[expressing a willingness to endure whatever may come] and follow Me [believing in Me, conforming to My example in living and, if need be, suffering or perhaps dying because of faith in Me] is not worthy of Me. (Matthew 10:37-38, AMP)

Loving Jesus more than anything

I don’t know about you but this hit me hard as a mom. I have a son and a daughter and I take being their mom quite seriously, joyfully but seriously. It’s a calling to me to raise them well, teach them to love Jesus and find their peace in him. But here comes my struggle. I do say I love Jesus more than anything. And I desperately want to. But do I put my kids first anyway when it comes to following Jesus? You see, I always wonder how this or that will affect my children and make decisions based on those answers. And that’s all good – and expected in some ways- but does this make me not worthy of Jesus? Do I put Jesus above all else or not?

I’d like to think I always put God first. But my children are my weakness. Am I willing to surrender also them to Jesus? I want to. And in theory, I am sure I have. But in practice, I am not so sure. Lord, have mercy. Our primary allegiance must be to Jesus rather than to family. Yes, I understand it but do I live it? Do I make decisions solely based on my allegiance to Jesus? Or do I factor in other things too? I’m afraid I do. How about you?

How can we do it?

So the command is there, Jesus wants us to love him more than anything. It’s not our natural instinct to do so. How then can we do it? We can’t but, thankfully, God can. So we need God’s empowering grace to do it. God will provide us everything we need. Just like he provided everything for our salvation. Jesus will show us how. It starts with trusting God for wanting good things also for our kids (or for us), we don’t need to be the gatekeeper. By God’s grace, we slowly grow in our trust in God and allegiance to Jesus. And in the end, we are all better off for it. Because that’s how God’s love works. We will never be short-changed, instead, we will be abundantly blessed.

 

Gracious God,
Forgive us for following you and loving you most
just in theory and not in practice.
Show us how to love you more than anything,
how to follow you without hesitation.
We want to be fully yours and worthy of you.
So we surrender ourselves, our families, our everything to you.
May only your will happen in and through our lives.
In Jesus’ precious name,
Amen

Q4U: How about you? Do you love Jesus above all? How do you do it?

Be blessed my fellow pilgrim as you embrace God for all he has for you!

Image courtesy of John Emery. I am linking up with #tellhisstory.

2 thoughts on “Loving Jesus More than Anything

  1. To love God is so completely different kind of love from loving one’s children that you can’t compare or rank them. God has built a system within us mothers, a system of putting our kids and their needs first. As long as it doesn’t mean neglecting God or denying Him, we’re free to love our children and we’re meant to do it. This is how I’ve experienced this question.

    1. Yes, it is a different kind of love, and, yes, we are meant to love our kids. But it is possible to make them your idols too which is not so good. But you’re right, God has done a marvelous job in creating a system within mothers to look after our little ones. Thanks, Katriina, for commenting, always a pleasure. Abundant blessings to you!

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