Greatest of all time

There is always talk of who is the greatest.

We do this in sports…

Who is the greatest running back in NFL history?

I would say Barry Sanders, some might say Walter Payton or Emmitt Smith and Barry Sanders own dad told him you are good but you are no Jim Brown.

We do this in other areas of life too.

What's the greatest movie?

Who's got the best marriage?

Who is a great person we look up too?

We think, we compare and we focus on some of the great things.

Hailee and I have a couples devotional book we are going through right now.

It's 10 minutes a night and is awesome, I highly recommend doing this with a spouse or future spouse.

Last night, there was a question it asked for us to discuss.

What was the most romantic thing your spouse has done for you?

We talked about this moment.

For me, it was hard to think of the single greatest moments.

When I think romance, I think Hailee surprising us with a night away from kids or coming over and surprising me with Hot N' Now.

I am a guy and in the book it talked about how what's romantic to a guy and a girl can be completely different.

What's great to me, isn't always great to Hailee.

I enjoy a great surprise that takes time to plan, when you are able to see the work put in.

We are all different when it comes to great and what is great.

A great movie might be The Clash of the Titans while a great movie to me is Dumb and Dumber.

Yet with all the differences in the world, faith is no different.

There are differences in faith.

There are different commandments to follow and often there are a ton of commandments.

So the teachers of the law came to Jesus and tried to trick him.

They asked him what is the greatest commandment.

They asked expecting him to fumble on this.

There were 365 negative (Ex. thou shall not murder) and 248 positive commandments.

So this was a really tough question, which is the greatest?

Jesus responds in Mark 12:30-31 with…

"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."

Wow.

What is the greatest and Jesus answered him.

He just summed up 613 commandments into two lines.

Love is huge.

The basis of Christianity is founded in love.

Love God, love your neighbors as yourself.

Love, love and love.

Yet we struggle with love.

We would love people BUT….

I do love them except they did this to me.

I am not going to love them because this is the way they treat me.

Notice how Jesus never talks like this.

We are not the ones that are allowed to make a decision of who we are to love and who we are not to love.

We are supposed to love, unconditionally, we say this but often we don't understand what it means.

It means love no matter what.

The neighor who lives next to you, who has the most Jerry Springer family needs to be loved sometimes the most.

Christians are supposed to love and often come up with conditions instead.

I would love them except…

They treated me bad so….

If they respect me I would…

Where does love come into how you would respond back.

We are called to love our neighbor as ourselves.

How can you make this happen today?

What's something nice you can do for a literal neighbor, for someone at school or a family member you haven't talk to in a while?

The choice is ours to love or not.

Have a great day.