Where should I focus my affections?

Psalm 42:1-2As the deer longs for streams of water, so I long for you, O God. I thirst for God, the living God. When can I go and stand before him?

Psalm 73:25Whom have I in heaven but you? I desire you more than anything on earth.

Mark 12:30“And you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength.”

If our greatest affection is for God, our priorities are in the right place.

Psalm 119:20, 97, 103, 167I am always overwhelmed with a desire for your regulations . . . Oh, how I love your instructions! I think about them all day long . . . How sweet your words taste to me; they are sweeter than honey . . . I have obeyed your laws, for I love them very much.

John 14:15“If you love me, obey my commandments.”

1 John 5:3Loving God means keeping his commandments, and his commandments are not burdensome.

We should hold an affection for God’s Word. Through God’s Word, we learn about God’s character and how to become more like him. When we grow in our affection for his Word and apply it to our lives, we will grow in our understanding and affection of the One who wrote it.

Psalm 27:4The one thing I ask of the Lord—the thing I seek most—is to live in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, delighting in the Lord’s perfections and meditating in his Temple.

Psalm 69:9Passion for your house has consumed me, and the insults of those who insult you have fallen on me.

John 13:34-35“So now I am giving you a new commandment: Love each other. Just as I have loved you, you should love each other. Your love for one another will prove to the world that you are my disciples.”

Acts 2:42All the believers devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching, and to fellowship, and to sharing in meals (including the Lord’s Supper), and to prayer.

1 John 4:20If someone says, “I love God,” but hates a fellow believer, that person is a liar; for if we don’t love people we can see, how can we love God, whom we cannot see?

God calls us to love his church. Through the church, we can worship him in a special way in community with fellow believers. God’s presence is especially vivid to us in the gathering of believers. People can be frustrating at times. But how can we claim to love our heavenly Father if we don’t love his children? And how can we claim to love Christ if we don’t love his bride, the church?

Psalm 16:3The godly people in the land are my true heroes! I take pleasure in them!

Matthew 5:44“But I say, love your enemies! Pray for those who persecute you!”

Mark 12:31“The second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ No other commandment is greater than these.”

Luke 10:36-37“Now which of these three would you say was a neighbor to the man who was attacked by bandits?” Jesus asked. The man replied, “The one who showed him mercy.” Then Jesus said, “Yes, now go and do the same.”

John 13:34“So now I am giving you a new commandment: Love each other. Just as I have loved you, you should love each other.”

The second-greatest commandment in all of Scripture is to love our neighbors as ourselves. That sounds easy enough, until we realize who Jesus meant by “neighbor.” Samaritans were descended from Israelites, but they had compromised and distorted the Jewish faith, so the Jews rejected them. In response, Samaritans had sided against the Jewish people politically, and even hindered the rebuilding of the Jerusalem Temple. The Samaritan equivalent for us today might be the “out there” denomination that gives a bad name to Christianity, or a political group that opposes a godly cause. Yet in Jesus’ parable, the Samaritan is the hero who showed kindness. Jesus’ listeners must have felt uncomfortable, even ashamed, hearing a story in which their enemy behaved with more godliness than their own leaders did. Jesus challenged them—and us—to imitate the Samaritan’s example of selfless love. Who are some people you struggle to love?