THE GREATEST COMMANDMENT

by Archie Parrish and John Parrish

The key to developing an intimate relationship with God is found in the first and greatest commandment: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.” And the second is like it: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.

Since the whole Word of God hangs on these two commandments, you can simplify what you must do to increase your friendship with Jesus by focusing on them. You can show that you are Jesus’ friend by obeying these key commandments that tell you (1) who you are to love and (2) how you are to love.

What does it mean to love God with “all your heart”? When we love God with our whole heart, we are choosing to develop a committed, responsible relationship with God. Out of loving obedience we choose to adapt our desires to God’s deepest desires. If our thoughts were recorded, they would play back thoughts that are true, pure, and encouraging as we attempt to think more like Jesus thought. As we love God, our choices will reflect more and more God’s choices than choices that reflect selfish and self-serving ambitions.

The second command Jesus gave He compared in importance to the first. What does it mean to love your neighbor as yourself? Jesus was saying, In the manner in which you naturally care for your own well-being, care for others. For example, we make sure we have plenty of the right food to eat. We try to promote our health. We look out for our best interests by nature. To the degree we do this for ourselves, Jesus said we are to do this for others. In Luke 10:29–37 Jesus clarified for us who our neighbor is: Our neighbor is anyone we see in need.

Jesus fleshed out some of the practical implications of the Greatest Commandment. One facet of loving God involves our worship of Him. Friendship with Jesus grows through worship. Jesus said God the Father seeks worshipers who worship Him in spirit and in truth (John 4:23–24).

Worship is the adoration of God as He is revealed in the Lord Jesus Christ. Love that reaches down from the holy God to sinful man is grace. Love that reaches out from one person to another is affection. Love that rises up from man to God is worship.

Another facet of loving God is the daily habit of reading the Bible. The way you get to know the thoughts of Jesus is by reading His book. In its pages Jesus speaks. The more you read, the more you will begin to think as He thinks, the more your mind will share His values and priorities, the more you will grow spiritually. Two concrete expressions of love to God are meditation and memorization.

Meditation is an important means of increasing our intimacy with Jesus. Meditation is not mere reading. Meditation on the Bible means you regard its words as nourishing food. With your mind and your heart, “chew” the words of God. Digest them. Regard them as essential to your well-being. Let God’s truths become a part of your life. By faith, use the strength you receive from them to meet the needs you see at home, at work, or in your neighborhood.

Memorization is yet another way to keep in touch with your Best Friend. By memorizing God’s Word, you will constantly have His thoughts, His perspective of love toward you, and His wisdom within you for confidence, instruction, and joy. The psalmist said, “I have hidden Your word in my heart, that I might not sin against You” (119:11). Since God’s first communication with man, He has helped His people store His word in their hearts so they can know Him more intimately.

God wants to speak to you. As your Best Friend, He desires to reveal more of Himself to you. In like fashion, He wants you to reveal more of yourself to Him. Through prayer, you can reveal your innermost thoughts and requests to Him and you can talk intimately with Him.

All people have an instinct to pray. It’s part of God’s image in us. The non-Christian may pray to several gods. The soldier in a foxhole calls out to God to save him in a time of emergency. But apart from living trust in Jesus, prayer is much like putting a note in a bottle and throwing it into the sea. The sender hopes it will reach its destination, but he is not sure it will.

In contrast, prayer combined with living trust and loving obedience is like an arrow fired at a specific target with accuracy and power. Our prayer is never addressed “to whom it may concern”; it is directed to “our Father in heaven.” Because He is our Father, we are able to trust Him; we ask Him as His children.

The implications of the Greatest Commandment have far-reaching effects on our lives. The command to love the Lord our God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength affects each area of our lives. As you become a friend of Jesus, your top priority should be to maintain your relationship with Him. You tell Jesus He has top priority in your life by giving His desires precedence in time, order, and importance over your competing self-pleasing interests. God is not impressed when you offer Him your leftovers. Only offer Him your best.

Jesus wants to be your Best Friend. He wants you to make Him your Best Friend. He desires for you to experience all that relationship can be. With each new expression of loving obedience to Jesus’ words, He will reveal more of Himself to you. Your intimacy and closeness will increase. Your friendship will grow. The more your friendship grows, the more like Him you will become. ■

Archie Parrish is president of Serve International in Atlanta. His son, John, works with him in that ministry. This article is adapted from their book Best Friends (Oliver-Nelson, 1984). Used with permission.

Loneliness A Cause for Joy

by Elisabeth Elliot

scott w. smith

You hear the wind move around to another quarter in the night. Soon rain is slapping against the windows, rattling the gutters, rushing through the downspouts. You try to sleep but a chill seems to have crept into the room—and into your heart. The old longing rises unbidden, the longing for someone who isn’t there. That thickness in the throat, dryness in the mouth, that restlessness—what is it? You lie perfectly still, listening to the rain, telling yourself that all is well, the bed is your own, comfortable, familiar, the place where you belong at this wee hour. You have been given much—home, work, friends. What is this weakness, this sickness, this storm in your soul?

Old anxieties crowd into memory—the friendships you might have cultivated but instead nipped in the bud by some lack of sensitivity, some coolly casual response to a timid overture, a joke or a caustic rejoinder, perhaps a thoughtless gesture of dismissal, a shrug—your own contributions to the distances others seem to keep.

“If you would have friends, you must show yourself friendly.” The whisper of self-pity says you tried. Maybe not hard enough, or maybe you came on too strong. The world’s a lonely place.

And what of the deep, answering friendship which seemed suddenly ruptured by you knew not what? For years you thought the understanding between you was complete. Now the trust you took as mutual appears to have been on your side only, and obviously misplaced. Lying there in the dark you rake through it again—was it I? What did I do or fail to do that ruined everything?

You’d hate to see a printout of the things you tell yourself at three o’clock in the morning—you the unholy, the unloving, the helpless. You the lonesome. All of the above, simply because you’re human.

George Herbert uses the metaphor of a pulley to describe how God, at creation, poured out on man all blessings but one. He gave strength, beauty, wisdom, honor, and pleasure. Then He stopped, withholding one thing: rest.

“ ‘For if I should,’ said He, ‘Bestow this jewell also on My creature, He would adore My gifts instead of Me, And rest in Nature, not the God of Nature: So both should losers be. Yet let him keep the rest, But keep them with repining restlessnesse; Let him be riche and wearie, that at least, If goodnesse leade him not, yet wearinesse May tosse him to My breast’ ” (George Herbert, “The Pulley”).

If weariness may toss us to His breast, so may loneliness. In the Psalms we find the deepest, truest, most unadorned expressions of a man’s helpless humanness. The psalmist, tempted at times to blame God, knows there is no other refuge. To the Lord he lifts up his soul, puts his feelings on the line for the Lord to see, and expects help. “Turn to me and be gracious to me, for I am lonely and afflicted” (Psalm 25:16). His attitude is one of willingness to be shown the Lord’s ways—show me, teach me, forgive me, rescue me, my hope is in You. [See Derek Kidner on pp. 27–28.]

Loneliness is one of God’s pulleys. It is a call to prayer. This condition of my earthly existence from which I cannot extricate myself is the very ground of my prayer. Because I am lonely and afflicted, I have reason to hope for divine help. God is in the business of coming to the aid of those who know their need and ask Him to meet it.

What, exactly, do we expect Him to do when we pray a prayer like the psalmist’s, Free me from my anguish?

Answers to prayer rarely come in the forms we envision. Christians have a good deal more information now than the writer of the Psalms had at his disposal. The life of Jesus shows us very plainly that suffering is required for those who would enter into fellowship with God. Loneliness is only one of many forms of suffering, but one with which nearly all of us are familiar. It is the very raw material by means of which we are to be formed into the image of Christ. When we turn to the Lord as the psalmist did, asking for His grace and His deliverance, is it with a determination to move things in the direction we would choose or with a self-emptying willingness to be His instrument, a channel for the prayer of the Spirit who makes intercession for us in “those groanings which never find words”?

Can we find in our loneliness a chance to die to ourselves and live in company with the Lord Jesus? He came to His own and His own received Him not. He had nowhere to lay His head. When people seem callous to our troubles we may walk the road to Jerusalem with Him and witness the stolid incomprehension of His closest friends. He had just told them that He was to be mocked, spit upon, flogged, and killed, whereupon they put to Him a breathtakingly irrelevant request: we’d like to sit one on your right and the other on your left.

In the hour of His great loneliness in the Garden of Gethsemane He asked not for understanding and sympathy but only that the disciples be there, stay awake, watch. He asks us, too, to enter into the mystery of suffering with Him.

How trivial our troubles are by comparison. We cannot put ourselves in the place of Jesus or the apostle Paul. Most of us are not called to great sacrifice. We are called to accept, that is, gladly to receive as from the Lord’s own hand, small ones. Even the minor pain of loneliness is the divinely measured and divinely proffered share in the sufferings of Christ that Peter speaks of. Don’t be bewildered by it as though it were something extraordinary, Peter says—it is a “cause for joy” (1 Peter 4:12–13). Take it, then, without fuss. Offer it up to God, and offer with it the sacrifice of thanksgiving. ■

Elisabeth Elliot, former missionary to the Quichua Indians of Ecuador, is the author of many best-selling books including Passion and Purity, Shadow of the Almighty, and Loneliness. Her audio/video versions of these and other topics are available through Ligonier Ministries.

Male Intimacy

A Contradiction in Terms?

by James Hurley

A Hero’s Death

An American hero is dying. The days of the strong, silent male hero of American literature are numbered. In popular culture and in recent research the strong silent males are being seen increasingly as emotionally impoverished, inexpressive males. It is questioned whether American men in general form loyal intimate friendships such as those of Cooper’s Natty Bumpo and Chingachook or Steinbeck’s Lenny and George.

Research indicates that making friends is good for our health. A friendship with intimacy is one in which both partners are confident enough of the other’s warm care for them that they feel free to honestly disclose personal feelings and concerns and can count on genuine support. Men and women who cannot establish and maintain friendships have higher death rates throughout the adult life span. These statistics are not accurate for everyone, but do describe American society in general. They call Christians to consider what it means to be godly men and women and how to raise children to be those kinds of adults.

Different Upbringing

The Scripture says, “Train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old, he will not turn from it” (Prov. 22:6). It is also true that if we train up a child in the way he should NOT go, he is likely not to turn from that. Research shows that boys and girls are trained for different roles. Some of the differences are good; some are not.

Labels. People interact differently with girls and boys. Gentler, more acquiescent labels are placed on babies in pink blankets. Mothers touch girls more often and hold them more often. As girls grow, mothers model concern for relationships as a feminine characteristic and teach daughters a wide vocabulary of feeling words. Little boys, in contrast, are given more aggressive labels and told to “be a man” by not showing (or knowing) their feelings. They are taught to be like dad, who is often distant and uninvolved, does not model expressive interaction or intimacy, and is more of a role than person. This sort of upbringing does not promote expressive, sensitive manhood.

Childhood activities. Children’s social activities typically reinforce what we start in our families. Boys are increasingly directed to competitive, team sports where they have a large, superficial friendship network. Girls are relating to one another in dyads or triads. Socialized away from individual friendships, boys (in contrast to girls) rank friendships low on the list of sources of personal satisfaction.

Adult Differences

By adulthood, men and women, function differently in three crucial dimensions that affect their ability to be close to friends and spouses:

Men have poorer intimacy skills:

Using feeling words. Women often correctly find men insensitive to feelings. Men use fewer feeling words and are less precise in their use. Eskimos have twenty-two words for different kinds of snow. I grew up in central New York state. We had three or four words to distinguish slush from powder snow and crusted snow. Eskimos would correctly find me insensitive to snow.

Poorer nonverbal communication. Women are better at sending and receiving nonverbal messages. Men literally miss much of what is said.

Men define intimacy superficially or sexually:

Superficial intimacy. The males define intimacy differently. Men feel intimate discussing politics, sports, or the movies. Women feel intimate discussing personal issues or their relationships.

Intimacy equals sexuality. Many men equate personal intimacy with sexual behavior. As a result, they misread the intentions of female friends and tend to substitute sexual intimacy for emotional intimacy with their wives. Male friendships are crippled, too. It seems effeminate or homosexual to discuss feelings or to show caring with men. From late childhood, men are taught to avoid affectionately touching males, limiting the range of interaction available to friends.

Men have less experience being friends:

Fewer friendships. Over the life cycle, men have fewer friendships than women. Men’s friendships drop way down at marriage and are even lower when they have family responsibilities.

Slower friendships. Men’s friendships take a different track than women’s. Women move more quickly to personal issues. Men take longer to reach that level. Many male relationships never do.

Competitive work setting. Men tend to work in job contexts that inhibit forming friendships. Settings with competitive positions, achievement, orientation, and clear hierarchy tend to have superficial friendships. Situations with noncompetitive positions, shared responsibility, and common goals tend to promote deeper friendships. Women’s job settings have tended to promote deeper friendships.

Masculinity and intimacy in the bible

Are these gender differences ones that we would like to change? Are they biblical? Our culture trains us to separate intimacy and masculinity. The Bible does not. Think about some of the great men of the Bible in terms of the joining of personal strength, emotional transparency, and long-term male friendships.

David was one of the great military leaders of his time. His masculine strength is not in question. How did he do for feelings, sensitivity, and maintaining close friendships with men? We don’t have to read long in the Psalms to understand his emotional transparency and sensitivity to feelings. He was able to speak and sing his love for God, his fears, his guilt, his hurt. He and Jonathan established a deep friendship that endured at great price to both. Intimacy and masculinity are comfortably joined in David.

Paul the apostle was a rugged traveler who covered much of the Near East on foot. He endured physical hardship and cruel beatings. Paul’s emotional transparency is similar to David’s. Paul’s speech to the Ephesian elders mentions his tears on their behalf (Acts 20:19). When he departed with the expectation of not seeing them again, they wept, embraced, and kissed (Acts 20:38). His deep friendships with Luke, Timothy, and Apollos leap out of the text of Acts and his letters. Intimacy and masculinity go together in Paul.

The Lord Jesus is, of course, our best example. He is a strong, sensitively caring, emotionally available man with a wide range of emotions. Purposeful but not reactionary, He confronted the power of the Jewish establishment and of Rome without flinching. In the temple He turned over the money changers’ tables. He confronted hypocrites and pronounced God’s judgment on them. He walked knowingly to His own gruesome death. Personal strength marked His every step, yet He was also tender and caring with lepers, prostitutes, children, and even Jerusalem which rejected Him. In His ministry He developed a close group of friends, living and traveling with a dozen men for three years. John gives us a look at Jesus’ willingness to have physical contact with men when he tells us that he (John) “leaned back on Jesus at the (last) supper” (John 21:20). Jesus’ model of manhood includes personal strength, emotional sensitivity, and the ability to make enduring, intimate friendships.

Developing man’s ability to be intimate

Our goal in life is to be conformed to the image of Christ. For many men, this means learning intimacy and learning how to pass it on to our sons. There are some clear first steps that can be taken.

1. Search the Scriptures to see what qualities the Lord says should mark His people and men in particular. Identify those which seem foreign to you. Start with passages such as Eph. 4 or Col. 3.

2. Begin to pray specifically for God’s help to change and for the opportunity to develop those qualities, one at a time. If married, ask your wife to help.

3. Learn emotional freedom from the Psalms. Read them out loud in the tone of voice in which you think they were written. Begin with Ps. 22, 42, 88, 149.

4. Learn to communicate effectively in a way that includes your emotions. Books such as Talking Together by Miller, Nunnally, and Wackman or Communication by Norman Wright are good starting points, especially for couples.

5. Participate in a small group of men who meet for spiritual purposes. Our church has “E” (for encouragement) teams of a half dozen men who meet weekly for fellowship, study, and prayer. They are learning intimacy. You may have to start your own group. Be patient; it takes time.

6. Model what you learn with your children. For many of us the journey to Christ-like intimacy will involve unlearning. Show your children a caring man. Help them learn to share feelings. Don’t pull away from them as they grow older.

Comfortable intimacy, without unlearning, is a gift we can give our children. ■

Dr. James Hurley, formerly with L’Abri ‘Fellowship, Covenant College, and Westminster-Seminary, is professor of marriage and family therapy at Reformed Theological Seminary in Jackson, Miss.

A Pastor’s Perspective

On Speaking Terms With Friends

by Joseph F. Ryan

Sadly, some Christians, even church leaders, are not on speaking terms with each other. One missions leader said recently that for most of his life he has managed to avoid those with whom he disagrees. I suspect he is not worshiping well. For we cannot worship if we are not talking with one another.

Paul says, “Be filled with the Spirit, speaking to one another in psalms, hymns …” (Eph. 5:18). He is concerned here about the conversations that lead to spiritual encouragement and ultimately to worship. Real spirituality often is revealed by the way we communicate with our friends. So the right questions are: Do our friendships lead us to the Lord in praise? And how do we foster spiritual friendship by the way we speak?

First, our speaking should reveal that we are submitting to one another. Being filled with the Spirit (Eph. 5:18) results in being “subject to one another” (Eph. 5:21). Submission demonstrates the Spirit’s presence in a friendship. Our ministry is not to be programs but rather the laying down of our lives. Leadership style in the church too often is entrepreneurial instead of sacrificial. The result is we do not care for souls very well. Does my speaking reveal my self-importance or a more realistic humility?

Second, our speaking should demonstrate that we prize diversity. We must resist making everyone look and act just like us. We learn the most in our ministries from those who are different from us. We affirm diversity (with words) because it is a truer picture of the church as a body. We affirm others’ callings and gifts (with words) because collegiality is a more biblical way to minister.

Third, our speaking should solve the problems of diversity. Diversity causes problems. The solution: Keep short accounts; don’t accumulate a list and dump. Agree to be open about competition and jealousy. We pretend these things don’t exist, but they are in the soil of our hearts and ministries, and they hinder what grows there.

Finally, our speaking should create an atmosphere of fun. Some have left the ministry because of a wooden and sullen atmosphere without laughter. One such friend, now in business, told me, “I have friends now, real friends, go-get-pizza-together friends.” The language of laughter should characterize our friendships. Pray that someone on your team will have the gift of humor.

The way we speak speaks loudly about our own spirituality and our friendships. “Then those who feared the Lord talked with each other …” (Malachi 3:16). ■

Joseph “Skip” Ryan is pastor of Trinity Presbyterian Church in Charlottesville, Virginia.