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YOUR CHOICES AND DECISIONS
Submitting Your Mind To Jesus Through Love
Mark 12:30 (NIV) Love the Lord your God with all your HEART and with all your SOUL and with all your MIND and with all your STRENGTH. Up until now, Jesus has been emphasizing your HEART, SOUL, MIND, and STRENGTH; but, the major theme of this verse is LOVE. If you are going to LOVE God with all of you, then you are going to need a power that is superior to your own. That is why God gave you His LOVE the moment you received salvation and justification. Now, as you bring your choices and decisions before God, God’s love opens your MIND to a much broader perspective.
Since You Have God’s Love
Loving God with ALL your MIND is the major process of submitting it to Jesus. LOVE is the reason for why you do what you do. If you are motivated by hate, then that is why you are making a lot of the choices you are making and the decisions you are making. There is an emotional aspect to LOVE that comes out of your heart. God’s love was actually poured out in your heart: God has poured out HIS LOVE into our hearts by the Holy Spirit. However, God is requiring you to allow it to influence your MIND. Love the Lord your God with all your...MIND.
Reasons For Loving
1 John 4:20 (NIV) If anyone says, “I love God,” yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen. If you are making decisions that you feel demonstrate that you love God; but, as you start looking at how those decisions are affecting those around you, you may decide that these are selfish decisions. Jesus actually measures all your decisions based on how they affect you and those around you. He measures your love for Him based on how good your decisions are toward yourself and others.
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Think About Yourself
Mat 7:12 (NIV) So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets. This requires you to stop and think, “would I want someone making those kinds of choices and decisions that affect me?” If you are involved in a decision you wouldn’t like being made for you, then it is vital that you submit your MIND in that area to Jesus. Mark 12:31 (NIV) The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.” How would you like for people to demonstrate their love to you?
Think About The Bible And Jesus
John 14:15 (NIV) If you love Me, you will obey what I command. John 15:12 (NIV) My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. If you want to be loved based on a decision that is a sin, then you might feel like your sinful decision IS you loving your neighbor as yourself. God’s love, that He has given you, sees love through the window of the Bible. All sinful decisions have damage they do to you and others on a long term basis. The decision may look like it is a loving decision in the begining; but, it will have wrong, bad, and evil consequences in the long run. Let Jesus give you His interpretation of decisions that are you loving your neighbor as yourself. And, let Him help you make decisions that are you doing to others what you would have them do to you.
Submitting Your Choices And Decisions To Jesus
You actually have God’s love already; the way to submit your decisions to Jesus through love is a process of yielding. Since you have it, you can yield to it, if you know how. As you are going through your day, you have to make a decision as to what you will allow to motivate you. You can ask Jesus, AT THAT MOMENT, to empower you to yield to God’s love; or, you can just do what you think is best. This is a moment-by-moment, issue-by-issue decision as to whether you ask Jesus or you consult your MIND.
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