Read: Mark 12: 30-31

And you shall 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: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”

Reflect:

Earlier this week, I focused on verse thirty in the passage above, but Christ gave considerable weight to the second verse in the quote.  We are to also love our neighbors, and this kind of love begins in the home.

From the last few verses of Ephesians chapter five through the first few lines in chapter six, Paul outlines the kind of family relationships we should strive for in our own lives and at its core is the kind of sacrificial love Christ displayed for those who would follow Him.

While he was still a young man, Jonathan Edwards realized the importance of family relationships:

“Resolved, never to allow the least measure of any fretting uneasiness at my father or mother. Resolved to suffer no effects of it, so much as in the least alteration of speech, or motion of my eve: and to be especially careful of it, with respect to any of our family.”

I am long past my twenty-first birthday and I’ve made many mistakes along the way, but that should not stop me (or any of us) from being firmly determined to love our family with something more than words, with our actions.

Respond:

Today many families are like ours – spread out across the country so that our daily interactions are minimal, but that doesn’t minimize the impact our lives have for those we love. We love in word and by our actions and perhaps the greatest impact is the prayers we offer to God on behalf of those we love the most. Here are seven topics –

• Open their eyes even wider to God
• Fill their hearts with love for others.
• Teach them the wisdom of Your will.
• Give them boldness to speak about Jesus.
• Send them good friends in the faith.
• Protect them from the enemies of their souls.
• Make Jesus look good with their life.

Read more at DesiringGod.org