Love your neighbour as yourself

Shalom dearest Beloved

Welcome back to another sacred appointment. 

Love. Why do we struggle to love our neighbour? Why do we find it difficult to engage in kindness? Why is it hard to keep no record of the wrong?

Do you think being beaten nearly dead was easy? Do you think being mocked was easy? Do you think bearing the cross was easy? No. Yeshua is, was and will always be King and yet He became flesh and suffered for the sake of His people. He stayed nailed to the cross because of His love. 

We always have the perspective sold to us by movies and social media that love is butterflies and roses and all the easy stuff. The world teaches that if love gets hard it's not right, but that’s the exact place where we grow. Love is the conclusion of the matter:  Matthew 22:37-40 TLV “And He said to him, ‘You shall love Adonai 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, ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself. ’The entire Torah and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

The entire Word, the Torah and the Prophets is connected to love. Love is the base that binds together the Torah and the Prophets. 

Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 13:1-3 “If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels but have not love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and know all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith so as to remove mountains but have not love I am nothing. If I give away all that I own and if I hand over my body so I might boast but have not love I gain nothing.”

For a long time I meditated on why love is so important to Abba. Why in so many places He speaks about love. First loving Him and then our neighbours. When loving Him, we will obey Him (John 15:15) and this love should then flow outward. Why ? Because when we obey Him, we abide in Him and He stays in us and then He prunes us and we bear the fruit of His spirit (Galatians 5:22-26). Love is a fruit of the spirit. The love as a fruit of the Spirit is described in 1 Corinthians 13 (TLV):

“Love is patient, love is kind, it does not envy, it does not brag, it is not puffed up, it does not behave inappropriately, it does not seek its own way, it is not provoked, it keeps no account of wrong, it does not rejoice over injustice but rejoices in the truth; it bears all things, it believes all things, it hopes all things, it endures all things.”

This again is reflected by Yeshua. His love for us kept Him on the cross. Now why is love important? Because it transforms us more into the image of Yeshua. We become more like Him and our faces become more lighted which convicts darkness, because darkness cannot overthrow light. This is the threat to the enemy. So as long as he can keep us busy with things encouraging an unloving nature, he has us exactly where he wants. Because we don’t walk on the base of the Torah and Prophets. 

Beloved, this is a deep word. I encourage you to sit with the Holy Spirit and learn more. 

Shalom