God’s priorities:

1. Love God
2. Love others
3. Make disciples

Loving God follows Him at all cost, keeping all He deems right and true, knowing relationship with Him as great reward, holding Him as first, most vital need and necessity. Love of God desires to please and honor Him as of greatest importance.

Loving others sets an example of loving God that helps them know God and His ways, so they, too, grow to love Him above all.

Making disciples not only teaches others God’s priorities, but it lives a life that sets an example worth following, that helps them understand loving God above all and loving others as we love self.

Jesus is saving grace, and He is the perfect example of loving God first and foremost, loving others as we love self, and making disciples that follow the example of Jesus in keeping God first above all. Following Jesus’s example realizes the importance of righteous living according to God’s laws and directives. It also recognizes that “my” sin gives a false understanding of God that leaves others with the impression that sin is okay because God forgives. Loving God and others realizes that “my” sin sets a stumbling block before others that hinders their relationship with God and their understanding of loving God first and foremost, causing them to stumble in their following hard after Him.

Father, forgive me. Empower me to truly love You with all my heart, mind, soul, and strength; and to love others as myself. Make my life an example of discipleship in Christ that honors You as God and helps others know how to truly love You above all else. Empower my repentance in every area of my life that sets a stumbling block before others. In Jesus, I take up my cross of self denial daily and seek to follow hard after You in the example of Christ. Amen.