What Is Desired? (Part 1) What Commands Did Jesus Give Us?

Jesus gave His disciples two commands.  These two commands are the whole essence of what a believer(Saint) should train themselves in focusing on everyday.  If a believer wakes up everyday and premeditates doing these two things, their walk as a believer will be right on target.

Jesus was asked by one of the Pharisees, "Teacher, what is the great commandment in the Law?" and Jesus replied this to him in Mathews gospel, Chapter 22, verses 37-40;

                         "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your
                         soul, and all your mind." 'This is the great and foremost commandment.'
                         The second is like it, 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' 'On these
                         two commandments depend the whole Law of the Prophets.'"

If you notice here, Jesus main emphasis was on "love".  He desires us to love the Lord our God and our neighbors.  So what does that look like.  We have to look at what makes it possible for Humans, who were born in sin, the flesh, which instinctively is selfish, to be able to love and know what that love is.  The apostle John showed us this in his first epistle in Chapter 4, verses7-13;

                         "Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God; and everyone
                         who loves is born of God and knows God.  The one who does not love
                         does not know God, FOR GOD IS LOVE. By this the love of God was
                         manifested in us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world
                         so that we might live through Him.  In this is love, not that we loved God,
                         but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation (bearing the
                         sentence of another) for our sins.  Beloved, if God so loved us, we also
                         ought to love one another.  No one has beheld God at any time; if we love
                         one another, God abides in us.  By this we know that we abide in Him and
                         He in us, because He has given us His Spirit."

Good news, we are able to love because the Spirit that we have been again of, and now lives in us, is love.  God is in us and God is love.  I wrote in my last blog that it is all about what we allow Jesus to do through us.  We use the love Jesus gave us to love Him back and not just Him but also our neighbors.

How do we love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul and mind?  We honor Him.  We learn to know how He desires us to represent Him.  This is all taught to us in the scriptures, so it is very important for you to read the New Testament and find out what those who knew Him wrote about what He taught.  You should always have this in mind, that Jesus, being the Truth, wanted you to know the Truth so that you could be set free.  Nothing should ever be interpreted in scripture in a way that would put you in bondage to it.  In scripture we are taught principles from Jesus that show us how to yield to Him so that He can live and love through us.  Period.  That's it.  Everything else is just religion.  Religion is man's way of conforming God to themselves, instead of them conforming to God. 

So love Jesus with all your heart. The best way to do that is already done when you received what He did for you on the cross.  Doing that, you allowed Him to become your Lord and Savior. Hmmmm. That's right, YESHUA, the Lord our Salvation.  That is why you were created, that He might dwell in your heart and soul, so that He could make you an eternal being that He could live and love through.  In the Book of Revelations, Jesus said this to the church that was Laodicea, in Chapter 3, verse 20;

                         "Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if ANYONE hears My voice and
                         opens the door, I will come in to him, and dine with him and he with Me."

Jesus knocks at our heart's door.  Before Jesus died on the cross, no human was ever able to open that door.  The Holy Spirit of God filled the whole universe and beyond.  The Light of God was everywhere except in the souls of man.  Man's heart was void of that Light and Life.  When Jesus died on the cross,  He broke that veil between man and God, as symbolized when, at Jesus death, the veil in the temple in Jerusalem was torn in half.  That veil in the temple separated man from the Holy of Holies that was behind the veil.  Before Jesus death, no man could ever come into the presence of God, only the High Priest could after the Passover sacrifice. 

When Jesus died on the cross, becoming the Passover sacrifice, you could say He unlocked the heart's door of EVERY human being.  He didn't open the doors and barge in, but He made it now possible for ANYONE, who wanted to, to be able to open up their hearts door and welcome Him in.  That door can only be opened from the inside. This is how we love the Lord Our God with all our heart. We respond to His knocking and welcome Him in, and let Him be the guiding LORD of our lives.  In return He gives you His Light and Eternal Life.  We become a New Creation.

We love The Lord Our God with all our mind when we make a decision in our minds that yields to the Spirit in us over what our flesh desires to do that is contrary to SELFLESSNESS, denying the flesh.  Our Spirit has power over our flesh, but we have to yield to it's power.  Jesus said to His disciples this in Mathews gospel, Chapter 26, verse 41;

                        " Keep watching and praying, that you may not enter into temptation; the
                        spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak."

The apostle Paul gave us another example on how to love the Lord our God with all our mind when he wrote this in his 2nd letter to the Corinthians, Chapter 10: 3-5;

                         "For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh, for
                         the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but divinely powerful for
                         the destruction of fortresses.  We are destroying speculations and every
                         lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God and we are taking every
                         thought captive to the obedience of Christ."
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As you read the New Testament, you will learn more about Jesus and His Ways.  The Spirit will always be on the side of His Ways.  The flesh is that dirty part of us that we use to walk in when we lived in darkness.  We responded to the ways of darkness, because we had no power over it.  Now we do, because we have the very Spirit of God now living in us.  Although we have an adversary, Satan, who knows all our weakness and tries to get us to respond to our OLD WAYS of darkness, according to the fleshes desires, we now have the ability to resist those desires through the power of JESUS in us as He brings to our remembrance the things that He has spoken.

The apostle John wrote this in his first letter, Chapter 4, verse 4;

                       "You are from God, little children, and have overcome them; because
                       GREATER IS HE THAT IS IN YOU, than he who is in the world."

Now, how do we love our neighbor as ourselves?  Are we suppose to love ourselves?  Isn't that being selfish?  Not at all.  We love ourselves enough to nourish our bodies to keep us healthy.  That is a good thing.  We sleep to rest our bodies to stay healthy.  That is a good thing.  We keep our bodies cleaned as to not be offensive to others.  That is a good thing.  We try to keep ourselves from undue harm.  That is a good thing.  We hydrate ourselves to keep us from dehydrating.  That is a good thing.

We love ourselves enough to take care of ourselves.  Jesus is telling  us to love others in the same way you love yourselves.  Be willing to take care of you neighbor in the same way you take care of yourself.  I know, who is my neighbor?  In Luke's Gospel, Chapter 10, verses 25-37, Jesus addressed this very question;

                         " And behold, a certain lawyer in the law stood up and put Jesus to the test,
                         saying, 'Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?' And Jesus said to
                         him, 'What is written in the Law? How does it read to you?' And he answered
                         and said, 'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all
                         your soul and with all your strength, and all your mind; And your neighbor
                         yourself.' And Jesus said to him, 'You have answered correctly; Do this and you
                         will live.'  But wishing to justify himself, he said to Jesus, 'And who is my
                         neighbor?'  Jesus replied and said, 'A certain man was going down from
                         Jerusalem to Jericho; and he fell among robbers, and they stripped him and
                         beat him, and went off leaving him for dead. "And by chance a certain priest
                         was going down on the road, and when he saw him, he passed by on the other
                         side.  And likewise a Levite also, when he came to the place and saw him,
                         passed by on the other side.  But a certain Samaritan, who was on a journey,
                         came upon him; and when he saw him, he felt compassion, and came to him,
                         and bandaged up his wounds, pouring oil and wine on them; and he put him
                         on his own beast, and brought him to an inn, and took care of him.  And on
                         the next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper and said,
                         'Take care of him; and whatever more you spend, when I return, I will repay
                         you.'  Which of these three do you think proved to be a neighbor to the man
                         who fell into the robbers hand? And he said, 'The one who showed mercy
                         toward him',  Jesus responded,  Go and do the same."

We will learn coming up in this series, how loving your neighbor as yourself is also loving the Lord your God.

May the peace of the Living God, Jesus, rest with you.

As A Jesus Filled Believer, What Is Desired Of Us?

I am going to do a 8 Part series on , "What is expected of us as a Jesus filled believer(Saint)?" It may sound like a lot of requirements, but you will see that all 7 parts blend into one heart.  Jesus does the work.  All we have to do is let Him.  The Spirit in you can do all of it very easily.  All we have to do is get our flesh out of the way.  We overcame the flesh by putting it to death on the cross.  We all have power over our flesh.  It is a battle that goes on in our minds.  Our Spirit meets and battles the flesh in our minds.  The mind is the boxing ring.  The Spirit wins when the result of what we decide to do is SelfLESS.  The flesh wins when the result of what we decide to do is SelfISH.  We have power over the flesh until we make a decision to yield to it.  That is as easy as it is.

Paul wrote this to the Galatians in Chapter 5, verses 24-25;

                        "Now those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with it's
                        passions and desires.  If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit."

And this to the Galatians in Chapter 2, verse 20;

                         "I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but
                         Christ lives in me; and the life that I now live in the flesh I live by faith
                         in the Son of God, who loved me, and delivered Himself up for me."

And again Paul wrote this to the Romans in Chapter 6, verses 5-6;

                          "For if we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death,
                          certainly we shall be also in the likeness of His resurrection, knowing
                          this, that our old self was crucified with Him, that our body of sin might
                          be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin."

So if we are now dead in the flesh and alive in the Spirit, we have power over the flesh.  The flesh is what sins.  All of us, when we are born into this world, are all born of the flesh and sin.  The sin is what makes the flesh act out in selfishness.  Sin basically is selfishness.  That which is not of faith is sin.  Faith is trusting Jesus.  If we trust that Jesus is in control, then we are selfless when we yield to Him over giving in to our own fleshly desires.  When we  choose to give into the flesh and our desires over His way, we are being selfish and yielding to the flesh.  We can always know which one we are yielding to, the Spirit or the flesh, and that decision is made in our minds. 

This will all be painless. The purpose is to keep you free.  You can already do what the Spirit(JESUS) desires, by just doing what is selfless.  I think we all know what that means.  What I will do is show you what that selflessness involves and what Jesus wants to do through you.  You are Jesus to the world.

This is what will be covered in this series.

(Part 1)  What Commands Did Jesus Give Us?

(Part 2)  What Does Jesus Teach Us About Praying?

(Part 3)  What Makes Us A Good Servant Of Jesus?

(Part 4)  What Does Giving Look Like?

(Part 5)  What Does Bearing Fruit Mean?

(Part 6)  What Are The Gifts Of The Spirit?

(Part 7)  How Do We Love?

(Part 8)  The Ultimate Act Of Selflessness.

May the peace of our Lord Jesus be with you.