How to Love God Easier
Jesus said to him, "'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.' This is the first and great commandment. A second likewise is this, 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' The whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments." (Matthew 22:37-40) The last few days have raised my level of awareness about an exciting principle that empowers those who want to cooperate with God's commands. For many years I saw God's commands as duties and obligations and even threats should I not comply. Yet I also learned from experience that trying harder to be obedient would never get me very far except into deeper frustration, even arousing a spirit of anger and resistance from deep inside. This in turn would increase the level of my ever-present sense of guilt as the whole mess formed into a circulating cycle of guilt, shame, groveling, seeking God for forgiveness, struggle ...