During the first couple weeks of practice in August, the Arkansas Razorback football team held open practices. Anyone was allowed to attend as long as they weren’t taking pictures. As the team moved closer to the first game, practices were closed to the public and will remain that way for the rest of the season.
They can’t risk having their game plan leaked. It would greatly hinder any football team if their opponent knew their game plan–which plays they were going to run, who they were trying to get the ball to, what the blocking assignments were, what they planned to do on defense, etc.
So it’s interesting to think that our enemy knows the game plan. Think about it–Satan knows the Bible. He sees what God is up to. He knows what’s on God’s heart.
On the other hand, we also have knowledge of Satan’s game plan against us. It’s one he’s been using for thousands of years. Check it out…
When Jesus was asked by a teacher of the law what the greatest commandment was, He replied:
“The most important one,” answered Jesus, “is this: ‘Hear, O Israel, the 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 is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.”
What’s most important to God? That we love Him with all our being. That He comes before everyone and everything else.
Satan knows that as well as we do, so his desire is to keep you from loving God. Now what would you say is the opposite of love? Hate?
I don’t think so. The opposite of love could easily be indifference, apathy or simply forgetting. If I forget my wife’s birthday and our wedding anniversary every year, then I’m not loving her.
I don’t have to hate someone to not love them. Satan doesn’t have to get you to hate God, just to forget Him or ignore Him.
1 John 5:19 says, “We know that we are children of God, and that the whole world is under the control of the evil one.”
The world system in which we live is under the control of the evil one. Could it be that Satan uses that system to distract us? To get us interested in other things? To capture our attention with whatever is shiny and new? To entice us to give our love and devotion to things or pleasures or another person? Anything to keep us from focusing our attention on God and giving Him our love.
God Himself told us that the greastest commandment is to love Him. So is the greatest sin then to simply forget Him?
What if many of our activities, commitments, appointments and responsibilities are actually meant to distract us from obeying the greatest commandment, to love God with our total being?
It’s possible to accomplish a lot of good stuff and pack a lot of pleasure into our lives, but completely miss the reason we even exist–to enjoy a love relationship with the One who made us.
Are there any changes you need to make to begin obeying the greastest commandment?