IT'S A HEART ISSUE

Mark 12:30-31  Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.' The second is this: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no commandment greater than these." 

How on Earth can we love God with a broken heart?  I don't know about you, but there are times in my life when my heart feels broken and damaged, even beyond repair.  Times when someone hurt you with their words or actions, times when something happened that shouldn't have happened.   Death, cancer, divorce, bankruptcy, illness, suicide, are just a small portion of things that can happen to break our heart, yet God wants us to love Him with our broken hearts?  Yes!

Love is a verb that should propel us into action but way to often we don't think of love as a verb.  We think of love as a feeling or emotion, but it's not.  Love is a verb.  It requires actions not just words.  It requires commitment, not just a "we'll see" attitude, it requires fidelity, not just "as long as things are going my way" belief.  Love is not easy.  It can be messy, it can be hard, and it can get complicated.  

What does it mean to love with all your heart?  To me that means to love someone with 100% commitment,passion, faithfulness and fidelity.  Way too often in this world I hear people say, love is 50/50.  That is wrong!  If you're only going to give 50% than just give up now and walk away. 50% just don't get it!  Love should be exciting and vibrant and alive, but when the going gets tough, love should be powerful, steady, strong and lasting.  Love should be able to endure any and all storms in life.  Whether we are dealing with marriage or love of God.

Just because things aren't going the way we had planned or hoped for doesn't mean we should just walk away and give up.  Love is worth fighting for, if it is real love.  That to me is the clincher here.  Do I really love God?  No, no I mean REALLY LOVE GOD!!  Because to me, if I do really in truly love God, I will love Him in good times and bad.  Even when I am hit by a major storm in life, I should love God with all my heart.  

Churches are full of people who say they love God but really don't.  Just because we walk into church every Sunday, does not mean we love God.  Just because we go to communion once a week does not mean we love God.  Just because we go to confession to get our sins forgiven does not mean we love God.  Religious activities and rituals do not demonstrate our love for God.   

So how do we love God?  How do we show our love for God?  Action!  In good times and bad, we need to reach out to others, we need to give to others, we need to read His word and study it, we need to allow Him to change us, we need to praise Him even during the storms and we need to trust Him.

Words are meaningless unless followed up by action.  Think of it this way, if your husband or wife tells you they love you, yet they're sneaking around with someone else, those words are meaningless.  If your children tell you they love you, yet scream profanities at you, those words are meaningless.  Love is easy to say but hard to do.  

I truly think that instead of telling God how much we love Him, we need to show Him.  We need to reach out to those people no one else does, the homeless, the orphans, the widows, the sick and the dying.  By sharing God's love for us with others, I think that means more to God than just saying the words.  Let me be honest here.  No matter how much we say we love God, God sees our heart and knows the truth.  No matter how much we try to deny the reality of our heart, God knows the truth.  

Our heart speaks through our mouth and acts through our foot steps and touches through our fingertips.  So what does your heart say about you?  Are your words loving and uplifting?  Are you walking where Jesus would walk?  Are you touching the lepers, like Jesus?  What we say and what we do are often 2 different things but today, lets change that.  Let's show God how much we love Him by loving those who do not ask for or deserve our love.  Open up your heart and learn to love again with less words and more actions.

God, you love us with an everlasting love, please help us to learn to love in action and deed.  Help our hearts learn to love you by loving others, in Jesus name I pray, amen.