By Milton Johanides
Put God's Love First
This New Year's Day, forget about plans to get fitter, lose weight, give up smoking and drinking. There is one New Year´s resolution that will take care of all the rest and make you a better person in 2012. Vow to love the Lord your God with all your heart. This is the most important commandment in the Bible and holds that position for a very good reason. From the love of God pour all the other blessings for a good and healthy life. As the spirit of love grows inside you you will benefit from feelings of temperance, humility, generosity and peace. A pure, natural joy of life will soon follow as will all the things that make you a happier person.
Learn by heart this quote from the Book of Matthew: "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength." (Chapter 12, verse 30). The power of meditating on the word of God is greater than any type of intricate analysis or rational thought.
Learning to love with your heart, your soul, your mind and your physical strength is the key to becoming a more enriched human being. If you are tired of making the same old mistakes in 2012 as you did in 2011, tired of giving in to physical temptations, tired of being ignored and talked about, tired of being overlooked at work, tired of ill health and low energy levels, tired of using food as a comfort, just tired of being stressed out about all these things that are obstacles to your spiritual growth, then repeat this verse on a daily basis until it becomes part of you.
You can never love the Lord enough. Your spiritual growth is nourished by His love and is the real motivator behind good works. In 2012 onward, take the time to learn the key lesson of a happy life which is to help others. God´s love nourishes the desire to be good and to do good things. This New Year´s day, abandon your selfish pursuit of self-advancement and monetary ambition. Learn to love your God and be prospered as you have never prospered before. If you put selfish ambition before everything else, you will end up miserable and embittered. By putting God´s love first in your life you are on the first step to happiness in this world and the promise of joyous eternity in the next.
