Daily Devotional - Persistent Prayer - Week 37 - Day 250 - Month of Prayer Day 7 - 9/7/25 - "Love God and Your Neighbor"

Author: Evangelist Jamie Hoffman

“Love God and Your Neighbor"
Scripture: Matthew 22:37-40, NIV
 
“Jesus replied: Love the Lord 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: Love your neighbor as yourself. All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

Devotion:
What are the greatest commandments? Today’s Scripture answers that question. Jesus said the first commandment was to love God. He said we are to love God with all of our heart, our soul, and our mind. God wants us to love and commit to Him completely. Our heart is at the center of all we do, and out of it flows not only life but also our desires. God wants us to desire Him above all else. Our soul is everlasting. Jesus came to redeem us back to God because without the gift of salvation our souls would have been lost. God wants us to love and serve Him eternally. Finally, the Word states we should love God with our minds. That means that even my thoughts have to reverence and honor God. I can’t give in to stinking thinking. My mind has to be renewed daily and kept focused on the goodness of God.

The second commandment is to love our neighbor as we love ourselves. So many times I feel we bypass the significance of words in scripture because of our familiarity with them. However, I want to highlight the word “yourself.” Yourself is a reflexive pronoun, which refers back to the subject. Many times, we can’t unselfishly love our neighbors and treat them well because we don’t have self-love to begin with for ourselves. Hurt people hurt people; unhealed people bleed on people. You can’t love someone as yourself if you don’t completely love yourself. I truly believe that God wants us to get to a place where we put Him first and love Him more than anything else, and we in turn embrace His love for us so that we can learn how to love who He created us to be and walk in His purpose and will for our lives unapologetically and without fear. Then, loving others and reflecting God’s love unselfishly and unconditionally won’t be a struggle. It will be easy to do.

Prayer:
Lord, thank You for loving us unconditionally. Help us obey Your commandments to love You and others unselfishly, in Jesus’ name. Amen.