Love your neighbour as yourself.

The Greatest Commandment

 28One of the teachers of the law came and heard them debating. Noticing that Jesus had given them a good answer, he asked him, "Of all the commandments, which is the most important?"

 29"The most important one," answered Jesus, "is this: 'Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. 30Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.'^f31The second is this: 'Love your neighbour as yourself. 'There is no commandment greater than these."

(Mark 12:28-31 NIV)

Ok so we hear this quite a bit, we talked about it at Sanctum Youth during the first week of iChurch but I want to steal Lizzie’s idea (hope you don’t mind!) and look at another side to it then we would normally.

Specifically I want to look at this part “The second is this: 'Love your neighbour as yourself. 'There is no commandment greater than these." So this is obviously about thinking about other people and we all understand the meaning behind it, treating others well and loving them. But like I said I want to look at it from a different angle.

The commandment states that you must love your neighbour as yourself. So to be able to love your neighbour as yourself you need to love yourself. How often do you find yourself forgiving others more easily then yourself, beating yourself up for the mistakes you make? How often do you look in the mirror and struggle to love the image staring back at you? I know I do both of these things at times and I am sure that I am not the only one. How are we able to love one another as we love ourselves if we are struggling to love ourselves?

Maybe we struggle with loving ourselves because we want to be humble. Loving yourself is not about becoming self centred or believing that you are better then other people. Loving yourself is about learning who you are through Christ and learning to be comfortable with that person and to love that person and realise that you are made just how you are meant to be. We don’t have to be the best, or be like a certain person, or be who others think we should be but we should try our best to be the person that God made us and wants us to be.

Maybe sometimes we need to learn to love ourselves as we love our best friends (being able to see past the flaws and trying to find the real person within and the things that they are good at and the person they are) and then we can love our neighbours as ourselves.

Jesus could have said love everyone as your best friend but he didn’t he chose to say as yourself. That puts us in the position of having to learn to love ourselves so we are able to love our brothers. 

God the provider.

Phil 4
"19And my God will meet all your needs according to his glorious riches in Christ Jesus."

At college this week we have had to collect source materials for our induction activity. We need to have them by the time we start college this afternoon. The one key thing that I needed was a realistic looking bird feather. So on the first day I bought a pack of brightly coloured feathers meant for kid’s craft, but that wasn't realistic the colours were all wrong (at least I couldn't get into trouble for taking nothing as we were originally told we needed them for the next day). Yesterday after college I saw a feather bower in a shop window and bought that, however the feathers were not quite what I was looking for and needed, and besides it had a bit of glitter on (Still better then the brightly coloured pack though). This morning I just happened to go out into the garden to do something and see the rabbit (I sometimes do this of a morning but it is by no means a daily thing) and on the floor I noticed a bird’s feather on the garden. I was like wow this is much more like it, although still not the perfect feather I had been looking for. Then I noticed another, which I thought could be useful and then another and another, until the last feather that I found in the garden. It was hidden in slightly longer grass then the rest, which was wet and wet my socks in my flip flops. However it was worth getting my feet wet as when I picked it up I realised it was the perfect feather, just what I had been looking for, the right shape, realistic bird colour and no glitter. God is a provider. He provides us with what we need. Not always what we want, but what we need.

Au Revoir

My Friends,

I just wanted to say a goodbye that you can all see before I go incase I miss any of you next sunday. I am flying on the 18th and will not be back until June next year. I love you guys so so so so much and I will miss you loads. I want to encourage you to keep praying, worshiping and supporting each other. There is an amazing, powerful and loving God up there and he deserves the best from you all, you don't deserve the best from Him but he gives it to you anyway.

I will be praying for you all while I am away and hope to hear from you regularly. You can keep up with me on my blog and email me whenever at thetictocmonkey@aol.com

Bless you all so much

Ben

XD