My involvement in crafting a new mission for our church, Grace Chapel, inspired this 2021 “Love God” ornament. After months of prayer and deliberation, we excitedly landed on a 9-word mission based on Jesus’ greatest commandment and great commission.
“Love God. Love People. Make Disciples of Jesus Christ.”
The Greatest Commandment - Love God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. [and] Love your neighbor as yourself. (See Matthew 22:36-40)
Back of ornament
The Great Commission - go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. (see Matthew 28:18-20)
Our team realized that everything hinges on loving God “with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind” - with the entirety of our beings – all in.
Which brings us to this - If Christians are the banner-bearers of this manifesto, how are we’re doing? More importantly, how would unbelieving people say we are doing?
I titled this ornament, “Love God” because, as I already noted, everything hinges on doing as Jesus directed with entirety - with all our heart, soul and mind. Imagine where we would be if only we all could start and stay there?
(Grace Chapel mission, adopted September, 2020)
“Love God. Love People. Make Disciples of Jesus Christ”
The ornament depicts the larger heart(s) encompassing the smaller one(s). Love God feeds into love people that feeds into make disciples. Should not the “formula” also work in reverse? A person invited to become a disciple would be drawn by the loving disposition of the believer engaging with him/her, right?
Arguably, LOVE gets the most press and, given its origins, is also the most bastardized. Love is everywhere, sells everything, legitimizes all forms of intimacy and can be nuanced to flavor every story ever told. However, the love we encounter day-to-day is typically detached from God.
To love God or anyone with our whole heart, soul and mind is to know what God (or a person loved) wants and then do it.
Said Jesus, ““If you love me, keep my commands.” (John 14:15)
One command is to trust God and not rely on ourselves.
Trust in the LORD with all your heart
and lean not on your own understanding;
in all your ways submit to him,
and he will make your paths straight. (Proverbs 3:5-6)
Engaging with the mission project while so many around me were spiraling through wave after wave of anxiety, unrest and antagonism helped me to reconnect with God’s love that fanned the sputtering flame of my love for him. Along the way, I “re-resolved” to be more discerning about incoming information and to trust God first and wait on him to direct me instead deciding on my own what seems right. The Bible often warns that what seems right is usually wrong.
There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death. (Proverbs 14:12, ESV)
It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh is no help at all. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life. (John 6:3, ESV)
I’ve been a committed Christ-follower for nearly 40 years so this revival in me is more a nuance than a stretch. However, I sympathize with those who struggle to believe in God or Jesus or who are dismissive of him or even rebellious against him. Perhaps their preferences are more rooted in nature and science. If so, consider that nature and science are very much at home in the Biblical narrative, too.
“But ask the beasts, and they will teach you; the birds of the heavens, and they will tell you; or the bushes of the earth, and they will teach you; and the fish of the sea will declare to you…. In (the Lord’s) hand is the life of every living thing and the breath of all mankind. (Job 12:7-10, ESV)
The men were amazed and asked, “What kind of man is this? Even the winds and the waves obey him!” (Jesus calming the sea - Matthew 8:27, ESV)
Even so, the biblical battleground is not waged with nature or science but in humans - to win the hearts, souls and mind of people that God loves. This is why God, in Jesus, became human to sacrifice himself to redeem people.
Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. (John 15:13)
God leads the love parade…. We love because he first loved us. (1 John 4:19)
The making of Love God
Hearts within hearts was the design I had in mind. The outer heart, Love God, encompassing the middle heart, Love People that, in turn, encloses the innermost heart, Make Disciples.
I found a three hearts design on Etsy by Anton, owner of KDEstudio21 based in Cheboksary, Russia. I reached out to Anton with some specs and, long story short, “Loving God” arrived in April, 2021 – my earliest completed ornament ever!
Original laser cut heart design by KDEstudio21on Etsy