Love God with all your body, soul, and mind

Time passes no matter what we do.  Time goes fast.  What do you think?  You realise that your life is also going fast because everything goes hand in hand with time.  For the first 6 days when God created everything, there were no human being witnesses.  He created everything in first 5 days that is beautiful to look at and admire it.  He didn’t do one item per day but many.  E.g many different species of fish but on the 6^th day, He only took one dust to create you and I.

He made us special, “let us make one like us, one of us, a part of us”.  Although animals can breathe, God did not use his mouth to breathe into those creatures,  He only breathed into human beings.  The love of God for humanity started here.

God gave us time to push us and help us to realise that we will not be on this earth for eternity because eternal life is somewhere else.  He decided the human being will die and when people die, it is painful because we don’t see them again except if we meet with them in heaven.  Because God loves the world, He gave us that one verse, John 3:16: only 26 words.  God gave his Son and whoever believes in his son will never die.  We trust in that and believe in it.

The greatest commandment is to love your God with all your mind, soul, strength and heart.  Four things.  Have you stopped to think how someone can love God with their soul?  How to love someone with my strength or mind?  Once you understand that, it is the beginning of knowing how God loves you and how to love him back.  If you don’t understand how to love God, you will achieve nothing with love.  Many Christians do not talk about this. 

I have asked many pastors, “Why don’t you tell us how to love with your soul?  How do I love God with all my heart? Teach it to me.  How to love God with my Strength? Teach me”, but no answer. 

Today, we will focus on the second part where Jesus added to love your neighbour in the same way you love yourself or your soul.  Do you love yourself?  God loves us and gave his only son and gave us everything we have surrounding us.  Being created in the image of God means we must love other people. 

Do you love yourself?  What is love to me?  If I don’t love myself, how will I love my neighbour?  If I don’t even know how to love, how will I love others?  You can only give what you have.  How much love do you have for yourself?  When I think of myself, I don’t know what I love about myself.  “Odon, can you tell yourself 20 things that prove you love yourself”.  I couldn’t count 5. 

When someone comes to you and says, “I love you”, you feel good but when asked, do you love yourself, what is your answer?  Jesus was trying to remind us that it is impossible to enter Kingdom of God if you don’t understand how precious you are to God and to love yourself.

Love has steps to grow, you need to do work and need fertiliser to grow.  Many people protect their love because they don’t want it to be broken.  Back home, we see people who kill themselves because the one who loved them is dead or doesn’t love them anymore.  I have seen people sacrifice everything for love including putting their Bible down.

Imagine how you love your mum, friend, children.  If you were asked, if you can only love one person on this planet, who will it be?  Many will not say themselves.  Ange I am sure has one child on the top of the list.  When we love those people, we are ready to sacrifice even our own kidney for them to live. Imagine if we loved ourselves in the same way.

We look at physical appearances and  believe that is what it is to love ourselves.  Many will spend thousands of dollars to look attractive.  That is not love or to love yourself, that is to be attractive to others not yourself.  I once watched the Kardashians.  They are see me see me, look at me, look at me, focus on me.  They can go through a lot of things, take operations to appear beautiful.  To look beautiful doesn’t mean people will love you.  They may appreciate your beauty but they do not necessarily love you.  Imagine if the entire world could only love beautiful people, the world would be different and Jesus would only come for the beautiful.

Human beings focus on things that are not important, focusing on our beauty rather than our love.  When you want to love yourself for the Bible, you need to understand that you were created in the image of God and because he loved the world so much, he gave his only son.  Do you give what is precious to yourself or to others?  Do you give so others can also be saved.

We have soul, heart and body.  God, you created us has been teaching us that the body is just dust and not important.  We should focus on what is eternal.  Whoever trusts in God will love for eternity. 

To love myself, I must be clean and happy and joyful with all I see and appreciate it.  Love is patient, that is the first point of definition of love.  Am I patient with myself?  When you do a mistake in your life, we sometimes become angry.  Even a small mistake can make you become wrong.  Some people will say, “it’s every time me, another mistake” and they are good at counting their weaknesses rather than their strength. 

When you love yourself, do you appreciate what you do?  In my community we celebrate wins but in NZ we don’t celebrate achievements or announce it. 

Yesterday I went to Auckland, we saw Samoan vehicles with their flags hanging out the window. They love their nation and are proud.  They were proud of their identity.  Are you proud of your identity as child of God?  I must be proud of how God created me.  God decided to create you in the way you are, with your physical appearance and your nature.  We don’t have to imitate others, just be ourselves.

I can’t say that because Ange sings very well that I must sing like her.  Ange will still be Ange and I will still be me.  Men try to dance like Michael Jackson, but they will never be Michael Jackson.  Love who are and be natural, don’t try to be synthetic.

When I read the Bible, am I patient or do I just read it quickly?

1 Timothy 12:1, do you remember that you are a servant of God?  God has chosen you and given you a place to be and the strength.  Are you strong enough?  Someone who is strong enough is also strong in love.  That’s how you know if someone is strong by measuring their love.  Even if someone hates you or does wrong against you, you will love that person if you are strong but if you hate, then you are weak.

The Bible says, let the weak believe they are strong and only way to be strong is to love.  After being strong, you must be trustworthy.  God trusts you, according to Genesis 1, God gave creation to us to control.  If God trusts you, why don’t you trust yourself?  Why are you unable to trust yourself?  You will only be able to trust yourself when you love yourself.

I love my hands so I will use them for God, I love my time so I will use it for reading Bible.  My father was good at soccer.  Every day we would play and he would always defeat me.  I was learning many skills and when I did those skills and pass my father, I would mock him and say, “you know nothing, you see how good I am”.  One time, by luck I won against my father.  I then told the other kids that my dad has something to say and I pushed my dad to tell them that I won.

For me, my focus was winning but forgot all the games I lost against him.  Our love in Jesus should have a focus of winning.  What do I win by being me?  What do I love?  Do I love my way of reading Bible, praying, thinking of God.

How often we can think of our husband/wife or children and we want to hear from them but how often do we think of God?  Love between you and God should be like the love you have for your family members.  Think about God.  When you don’t see God for a few days, do you panic, do you start the search for God? 

How often do you call God to come back into your life?  How often do you tell yourself to love yourself?  Do you love your heart? Your soul?  If so, what do you do to love your soul/heart?  If I ask my soul, what do you love?  What will it say?  Some might say, when I read the book of Psalms, I feel joy.  When I sing a certain song, I feel joy.  Keep feeding your soul with great things, take care of it.

When you love your soul, it will be easy to love your neighbours.  When you are patient with your soul, you will be patient with others.  When your body asks for something at the same time as your soul, there will be a fight.  Your body will want to sin, but soul doesn’t want it.  How often do you favour your soul when your body battles?

I jumped onto YouTube this morning, it said, “praying to God is wrong, pray doesn’t work, if you pray, you won’t get money but if you give money, you will get money, your prayers are useless just fight for money”.  Why can’t you invest in your soul or for the desires of heart to please the Father who sent his son to die for us.  When you please God with your heart and soul, you will get reciprocal love.  If you only say God loves me but you don’t love him back, it will be like the prodigal son.

Love yourself first then compare the way you love yourself to others.  Do I pray for my neighbours?  If I have a headache, I feel it but when my neighbours go through pain, do I care or not?  The only thing I will look is when my dog barks at them as they pass. When we do not care, we don’t love.  Love cares.  Do you care about yourself?

Soon we will go back to heaven and my soul must go to God and take our love that I have given to myself and others.  If you have protected your soul, your soul will testify.  He fed his body 6x per day but only fed me once/week.  The body was given all the privilege.  You will have to explain why you loved your body more than your soul or heart.  Your body can’t defend you, it was your decision.

Why did I give to you eyes but they were only on your phone 6 hours per day but no time to read the Word of God.  Love yourself means to love your soul.  Once you love your soul, you will pass that on to your children.  Look and try to find what your soul needs.  The need of your body should come last.

Uriah the Hittite - 2 Samuel 11

An Undivided Heart - Psalm 86:11

Love Your Neighbour

Spiritual Assessment

2022 will soon say goodbye and we will never see it again.  For many companies, this is the time they do their end of year assessment to see the performance of their workers. 

What was my performance be this year?  What have I accomplished for God or for myself and for those surrounding me since the beginning of the year?  How important is a self-assessment and spiritual assessment to think about our coming Kingdom of God.

One time, I visited a family and this man was quite large and he stood on the scales to weigh himself around the end of the year.  He was trying to suck in his stomach and his wife said, that won’t help it won’t change anything.  He said, “I’m sucking my stomach so I can see the numbers on the scale”.

In life, what we see is not necessarily what others see and what they think may be different to our thoughts. People will judge us.  The end of the year means we will finish the race for this year but we can come back to God to say thanks to God, challenges were there.

Phil 3:13-14,

According to writer of Philippians, it is important to focus all energies on one thing…forget the past but look forward to what lies ahead.  The past is covered with a lot of things, battles, crying, challenges.  That past is gone and has good/bad memories, it is now time to focus on what lies ahead.

What are your projects for the coming year?  What are you planning for next year?

My mum used to say, one year older.  She was afraid of getting older.  She says, “When I get to 90, I will lose my strength, mental capacity and joy for living”.  That is what she projects for the coming year.  I tell her to have a good perspective, you are getting close to Jesus.  Forget about your body and feelings that try to pull you back.

I’ve never seen a woman who tries to fight getting old like my mum.  If my son says grandmother, she will say, “I’m not your grandmother” because she wants to say she is younger.  Blessed if you are young in Jesus so you can serve him, obey him.

Phil 4:6-7, don’t worry about anything.  What makes you worry in your life?  Why bother to worry?  Why be shaken for things that will pass.  Sometimes we fear what we shouldn’t and worry about things that we shouldn’t but we stop ourselves from worrying about eternal life that is coming.

Instead of worry, pray.  Tell God about your problems, your ups and downs.  Pray means to speak to God.  According to my life, when I worry too much, I lose.  That is the principle.  You lose your joy, strength and ability to do things.  Some feel they can’t make it and start to search for people to intervene.

If you think of all the negativities, you will lose your mind.  When you worry, you think about all the negatives and not the positives.  When you worry you lose trust in God.  Can God allow this?  Can such a thing happen in my life?

The Word of God says to tell God what you need and thank him for all he has done for you.  Sometimes we don’t know our needs.  If can pray from morning to evening to be tall, even if I pray for 50 years, it will never happen.  “God make me white”, it will never happen.

Do you know your needs?  Do you know what your heart, body, or thoughts need?  If you don’t it will be impossible to tell God your needs.  Our repetitive prayers are not our needs.  Identify our needs first and tell God about it.

After knowing your needs, think about what God has done for you.

Once in my class, as kids, our teacher told us to say 10 things of what God has done for us.  We were all unable to find 10 things.  When you pray every day, do you count all that God has done for you throughout the day or do you just say, thank you God for everything.  Take your time and thank God one by one.  E.g. I woke up this morning, you gave me strength, you gave me sleep, I rested, it was so good, thank you for nice dreams,

Children can wake you up but another thing to be grateful for, I have children, they woke up, they speak to me.  Levi will come to me first thing in the morning and he will want to speak to me.  Sometimes I feel like saying “go away” but it is so nice.  When children grow up, they won’t have time for their parents anymore.

Every time we must glorify God and there are millions of things that you can bring in front of God.  You can easily pray for 2 hours.

Phil 4:6-7, then you experience God’s peace.  To get God’s peace is so simple, it’s just to come to God and tell him everything.  I don’t have to worry, tell God what I need and then thank him.  That is the formula for peace of God.  If you didn’t have peace, it is maybe because you worried, you didn’t tell God your need.

“Exceeds everything you can understand” and “guard your heart and mind as you live in Jesus”.  What can guard your mind?  According to Bible, you need peace of God which is like the watchman of your heart & mind, it will guard and protect you.

Who is a guard?  Sometimes I see big people in this world who have people following them (security guards).  They will even spread throughout the crowd.  A few weeks ago, a man threw eggs at the king of England.  In less than 5 seconds, he was already caught and Charles carried on like nothing happened.  Different to George W Bush who dived when someone threw a shoe – he feared.

Charles knew that he was protected by guards and he let it go without getting angry.  No matter what hits your life or how people talk against you, the peace of God is there to guide you.  Don’t bother yourself and ask, how did they treat me like that?  That is not your job.  The guard that God has given you is peace.  Your mind needs to be protected to not react in a way that will harm you.

Luke 13: 6 (parable), God has given to us a lot of things but maybe he came last year to see what we produced but didn’t see any fruit.  Maybe he is like, “Jesus, you should cut down this tree.  I gave to him/her everything and they don’t produce”.  We have to pray and tell God everything.

Most of the time I pray to God and I encourage you to pray to God too,  “I don’t do all that you are expecting me to do, I need help, fertilise my body, mind, heart, desire.  Add some fertiliser in me so I can be productive.  If you don’t fertlise me, I won’t’ produce and I will be the same for 20 years.  Change me, transform me”.  Jesus will plead on your behalf to give one more year.  Tell God where you failed, if you didn’t have enough strength to read Bible or pray, tell God.  Tell God about your situation and where you had problems.

One year I was in a place where the only food they had was rice and snake.  I’ve never eaten a snake before.  I started to think about eating a snake and how they act.  It was a challenge.  I comforted myself, I will tell them to give me rice separate from the snake.  They mixed the whole thing together. because I was hungry, I had to shut my mind and just open my mouth.  To chew that food it was hard to swallow it but because or hunger, I had to accept.

Have you had a hard situation that you found hard to accept?  What do you do?  Do you give up? No, you can’t give up, it is a path of your life and without passing through there, you won’t make it.  E.g. Joseph without going to jail could not become who he was in Egypt.  When you cross a hard situation and you feel like you are incapable of continuing, come close to God and talk to him.

Everything will come to pass even your problems.  Focus on your present and future.  In a movie theatre, once you sit down and the movie starts, everyone will look to the screen and concentrate.  We avoid to listen to others in the room next to us.  The room can be dark but our eyes are focusing on the light.  If someone talks, you tell them be quiet.  You forget that you sat in the seat for 2 hours without moving. 

Do you look at the Kingdom of God coming in front of you without being distracted?  Tell God to give to you the ability to concentrate on the Kingdom of God that is coming.  Where are your eyes?  If your eyes are focusing on Jesus, then all that surrounds you, won’t bother you.

At the end of the movie, every person will give a different story of the movie.  When we don’t concentrate on what is important, we miss the opportunity and when the opportunity passes, that is all. 

When you are at the airport, you can be eating, talking, reading but as soon as you hear your flight number, you will listen.  Do you know your flight number with God?  Jesus is calling us to go to heaven and we are getting ready.  It is time for us to check in.  If you don’t know your flight number for God, you will miss your flight.  If you don’t show up on time, the flight will take off without you. 

How many times have you missed the blessings of God because you delayed or you were distracted?  E.g. my boy Ken.  He was traveling to US a few weeks ago.  We drove from home and just after Huntly I said to Ken, do you have your passport?  “Oh no.  I left it behind”.  We had to go back home.  Now we are in hurry.  Sometimes boys won’t leave behind their PlayStation but can leave their passport.

We got to the airport and he left.  Ken when you arrive, please send us a message and photos.  Nothing.  “Ken, did you arrive?”  “Oh yeah, I’m here”.  “Ken, take photos”.  He didn’t.  Sometimes we do the same to God.  We give promises.  He takes care of us and sends us somewhere with instructions but we don’t do it. 

When it was time to go to airport with Ken, he didn’t even plan how to get to airport.  How are you getting there?  “I never thought about that”.  “Who is picking you up from airport?”  “I don’t know”.  On his way back home, he didn’t even think about who will pick him up.

We spiritually are a new generation acting different to Moses and Abraham. Moses and Abraham would say we are mucking around with God and playing with God as a joke.  We are this careless generation.  We have our own priorities.

Let the end of the year be a good year for us and 2023 be a blessed year.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Trusting God

The Value of Friends