Mark 12:28-34
The Greatest Commandment
28 One of the teachers of the law came and heard them debating. Noticing that Jesus had given them a good answer, he asked him, “Of all the commandments, which is the most important?”
29 “The most important one,” answered Jesus, “is this: ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. 30 Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ 31 The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.”
32 “Well said, teacher,” the man replied. “You are right in saying that God is one and there is no other but him. 33 To love him with all your heart, with all your understanding and with all your strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself is more important than all burnt offerings and sacrifices.”
34 When Jesus saw that he had answered wisely, he said to him, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.” And from then on no one dared ask him any more questions.
God is LOVE...So the Good Book is as much about the heart as it is about the mind...Knowing God with one's heart and mind and soul brings a peace beyond this world...The Bible gives us a history of Creation, God's Word, and much about His Son in the gospels and New Testament...The Bible teaches us the Truth and the Way of Life...As St. Mark says in His Gospel, Jesus tells us that our LORD our God, the LORD is One...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 Great Commandment is this: Love your neighbor as yourself...There are no commandments greater than these...We are are right in saying that God is One and there is no other but Him...To love Him with all your heart, with all your understanding and with all your strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself is more important than all burnt offerings and sacrifices...When Jesus saw that the one questioning Him had answered correctly He said to him, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.” ...And from then on no one dared ask him any more questions, because of His Great Knowledge...Jesus' Everlasting Words are a revelation...
Minister Joseph Parker had these things to say on life that relates to the heart, to love, and to the teachings of the Bible...Parker said: Have no fear for the unsettlement or the disturbance of the Kingdom of heaven...It began in eternity, it will go on through everlasting; there is no panic in the Divine Personality...God is peace, God gives peace, God gives rest...Everywhere I find the signature, the autograph of God, and He will never deny His Own Handwriting...God has set His tabernacle in the dewdrop as surely as in the sun...No man can any more create the smallest flower than he could create the greatest world...No true manhood can be trained by a merely intellectual process...You cannot train men by the intellect alone; you must train them by the heart...When children ask you questions about gray hairs, and wrinkles in the face, and sighs that have no words, and smiles too bright to be carved upon the radiant face by the hands of hypocrisy--when they ask you about kneeling at the altar, speaking into the vacant air, and uttering words to an unseen and in an Invisible Presence--when they interrogate you about your great psalms, and hymns, and anthem-bursts of thankfulness, what is your reply to these?...Do not be ashamed of the history...Keep steadily along the line of fact...Say what happened to you, and magnify God in the hearing of the inquirer...When science advances religion goes along with it; science builds the altar at which religion prays...
Parker adds: Humans need Jesus Christ as a necessity and not as a luxury...You may be pleased to have flowers, but you must have Bread...Jesus is not a phenomenon, He is Bread: Christ is not a curiosity, He is Water...As surely as we cannot live without Bread, we cannot live truly without Christ: If we know not Christ we are not living, our movement is a mechanical flutter, our pulse is but the stirring of an animal life... Speak to the suffering, and you will never lack an audience...There is a broken heart in every crowd...Goodness is a perpetual quantity, all penetrating, all searching, impartial, noble, a comfort in distress, a refuge to the weak, a tower and a defense to all who wish to be right and to do right...Only Christ could have conceived Christ...The man whose little sermon is ‘repent’ sets himself against his age, and will for the time being be battered mercilessly by the age whose moral tone he challenges...There is but one end for such a man—‘off with his head!’...You had better not try to preach repentance until you have pledged your head to heaven...Giving up on life is easier than going through the hard times to find the good...Never throw mud...You may miss the mark, and you'll have dirty hands...Sin is a clenched fist and a blow in the face of God...The truly religious man does everything as if everything depends on himself, and then leaves everything as if everything depended on God...True preaching is the sweating of blood...After reading the doctrines of Plato, Socrates or Aristotle, we feel the specific difference between their words and Christ's is the difference between an inquiry and a revelation...