“Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?” 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.
God expects us to accept His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, as our Savior. He expects us to give our lives to Him, and in so doing, develop the character of Christ. God wants us to become more like Christ.
God's plan for you is the same; it is to prosper and grow spiritually in Christ. His plan to give you a hope and future has never changed. Your hope and future is in Jesus. All creation's hope and future is in Jesus.
God's will includes provision for human freedom, for example. Living in a broken world, we struggle against spiritual enemies and real evil. Thankfully, God is always at work to bring redemption out of our brokenness (Romans 8:28).
Throughout the Bible, the cry of God's heart is His desire for us to be His people and for Him to be our God. He created us for Himself, but He also created us with a free will. We can choose to love or not love Him.
But there is work that God calls all of us to do, and it's laid out for us in the Bible. God makes it clear again and again that we're to love others, care for the poor, and live our lives in such a way that we point to the power of the gospel.
When asked which commandment was the most important, Jesus said, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself” (Matthew 22:37–39).
The One Thing That Pleases God: Faith!
He takes care of our physical needs.
God promises to provide what we need (Philippians 4:19, Matthew 6:31-32). He created the universe and gives food to every living thing — including you and me. The same God who provides food for the animals will not allow us to go without (Psalm 145:15-16, Luke 12:24-26).
God has an over-arching purpose for all believers: to conform us to the likeness of His Son, Jesus Christ (see Romans 8:29). He also has a specific purpose for each of us that is His unique, tailor-made plan for our individual life (see Ephesians 2:10). And God will fulfill that purpose.
To love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, say "yes" to him. Scripture: Mark 12:28-34.
Micah 6:8, the "Micah Mandate," gives a balanced answer to today's spiritual and political questions. "What does the Lord require of you? To act justly, and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God."
“The deepest desire of every human heart is to be known and to be loved,” Father Joe Campbell said in a Feast of St. Joseph the Worker homily Saturday. “This desire reaches its fullness in the desire to be known by God Himself.”
He sees you in the Beloved—He sees you in Christ, and He sees the blood that has been shed for you by His dear Son. When God looks at you today, He sees Jesus. Because of this, His thoughts toward you are thoughts of loving-kindness, forgiveness, blessings, and favor.
God's original plan for man was to reflect His likeness; to manifest His nature. Now that calling comes to you and me. This is why God has given us the Holy Spirit, so that, through the power of the Holy Spirit, we can show forth God's nature in our daily life.
It's God's desire that we live according to the righteousness He's bestowed on us through faith in Jesus Christ. In Him, we are made new, “created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness” (Eph. 4:24) through the gift of the Holy Spirit. Once we were slaves to sin, but now we are not.
One of the truest ways to demonstrate your appreciation to God is to simply pray and tell Him. God loves to hear from you. He often wonders why you never call or write. Seriously though, prayer is the simplest and surest way to convey appreciation to God.
Ultimately we use this theme to point our first graders to the Gospel: that God had a perfect plan for saving his people from sin, sending his only begotten son, so that whoever believes in Him will have eternal life.
God's plan is unchangeable and nothing and no one in this universe can stop that plan. We have Genesis and we have the Book of Revelation. God has a plan and it will come to pass, and nothing can stop it. Nothing can thwart that plan.
In Moses 1:39, the Lord declares, “For behold, this is my work and my glory—to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man.” His great plan, which includes the atoning sacrifice, is to give immortality to all mankind.