“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. And the second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” (Matthew 22:37-39 NKJV)

It’s all too much. I’m not sure I’ve ever felt this kind of heartbreak for people, for our world as I do right now. My soul is heavy. If you know me at all, you know I’m a wordy girl, yet lately, I’ve been at a loss for words.

Who would’ve thought when we flipped our calendars to 2020 we’d be living in such uncertainty and mad chaos? I mean it’s all happening so fast. It feels like our nation is in a downward spiral and we can’t seem to get a grip on it and yank it back… back to where Covid-19 wasn’t a national pandemic… back to where hate and racism were not stoking the fires of violent, deadly protests.

For me, I dubbed the new year 2020 as the year of vision. Yeah, it’s kinda corny, but I was extremely excited to see what new revelation God might bring to my spiritual growth.

But what I’ve discovered so far this year, is that God’s shedding His light not necessarily on a new revelation, but He’s honing in on old truths. Verses I’ve read over and over throughout the years.

In our Scripture verse today, Matthew 22:37-39, Jesus is responding to the failed attempt of the Pharisees to trip Him up with their question… Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?

And Jesus’ answered… Love the Lord God with ALL your heart, soul, and mind. (The first and great commandment) But notice what Jesus says next before He gives the second commandment… and the second is like it. The NLT translation says… A second is equally important. And what is the second commandment?… Love your neighbor AS yourself.

I love how Jesus handled the religious Pharisees. Here they are asking for the greatest commandment and expected Him to give just one answer out of over 600 laws. Yet He gave two commandments that stand equally together and sum up the law in a nutshell — our responsibility to God and our responsibility to humankind — and it left them speechless.

So if we have a responsibility to humankind, then what’s happened to our humanity in the world?

Where’s kindness…compassion….and…love?

Don’t get me wrong. All of this isn’t lost altogether. There are still people who are kind, compassionate, and full of love. But friend, Satan is working overtime to snuff out humanity and we simply can’t allow it.

Our human hearts are fueled by emotional-kind of love. But when we become a child of God, He equips our hearts with the ability to love with His supernatural kind of love.

So where do we begin in our quest for His supernatural kind of love?

I believe the answer is three-fold

First, we have to learn how to love God with all of our hearts, soul, and mind. And we do this by cultivating an intimate relationship with Him through prayer, by stepping aside so He can enter and fill all the deep, dark spaces of our life with His Holy Spirit, and by reading His Holy Word.

Second, we must learn to love ourselves. What did Jesus say? Love your neighbor AS yourself. And if we don’t love ourselves as God designed us to, then Satan will cloud our minds with self-doubt.

Third, genuinely love our neighbors. Sometimes it’s easy; sometimes it’s not. We may not like everyone’s behaviors, but He calls us to love them anyway. (1 Cor. 13:1-3)

So imagine we have a needle, but no thread, a lock with a missing key, or one shoe without the other. Our intentions with these things will ultimately fail. And it’s, for this reason, Jesus wove these commandments together as equals. God doesn’t intend for us to obey one of these commandments without obeying the other. We can’t say we love God, but not love people. We can’t properly love ourselves and people without first learning how to love God.

Love never fails. (1 Cor. 13:8)

The very breath of God authored His beautiful love letter through the hands of men so we could see His love unfold throughout its pages. (2 Tim. 3:16 NKJV) And God demonstrates His supernatural love in countless ways, but his ultimate example was giving His Son to save our souls. (John 3:16 NKJV)

There are so many hurting people right now. Some were walking through storms when the Covid-19 pandemic storm hit. Then the hate and racism storm piled on top.

People need God. And as godly people, we need to exude His love to our neighbors now more than ever.

But what about loving the haters, the hard-to-love, the ones who haven’t been kind? That’s always been easier said than done right?

I want to walk you through something I did last night. I closed my eyes and combed back through my life picturing the faces of everyone I could possibly think of who has hurt me in one way or another. (This included the ones who have never let the words, I’m sorry, fall from their lips.) Some of these people I see from time to time and some I never see.

For every face that entered my mind, I said these words… I see you, I love you, I forgive you, and I’m praying for you. I looked past their behaviors and straight to their soul. A soul that God loves just as much as He loves me.

There were some faces where those words came easy to say. Then there were others where it simply wasn’t. But this is where I actually felt God’s supernatural kind of love kick into overdrive and zip right past my emotion-driven heart to bring me to the place I needed to be with that particular person. And WOW… that’s when the tears really flowed as I felt my heart love like God and I wept uncontrollably. Mercy, I’m crying now as I write this!

Trust me, I certainly don’t have it altogether and I’ve struggled through the maliciousness of others just like you. But I want to hang on to this kind of love forever! The kind of love where it doesn’t matter if I’m picturing their face or if they’re right in front of me I could say…

I see you, I love you, I forgive you, and I’m praying for you.

And maybe we need to look in the mirror and say these very words to ourselves so we can heal and move forward to love others.

Friend, either way, I encourage you to do this because it’s powerful.

Wouldn’t the world be a better place if we could all just be like Jesus who instantly loved with this kind of love? Who was able to say in the very midst of His darkest and most painful moments, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do.” (Luke 23:34 NKJV)

So today as we look out to our hurting world, let’s revive humanity and put these words on repeat… I see you, I love you, I forgive you, I’m praying for you.

Dear Heavenly Father, help us to continually grow in our love for You, ourselves, and others. Teach us to love and forgive with your supernatural love. Set up divine appointments Lord where we can be the kindness and see the kindness. Help our world rediscover what it means to live out humanity. And it’s in Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.