“And one of them, a lawyer, asked Jesus a question to test Him, ‘Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the law?’ And He said to him, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And the second is like it. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets.'”
– Matthew 22:35–40
Oh, we need to pray continually these verses over our lives, to pray for these verses in others’ lives.
Matthew 22:35–40 Teaches the Greatest Commandment
Jesus telling us what is most important in your life and my life today. What is most important, more important than anything else, is for you and me to love God with all our heart. Not some of our heart, with all our heart, with all of our soul, with all of our mind. This is the great and first commandment. This is the commandment from which everything else flows, including the second commandment, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
I pray this over my life, over my wife and kids. I think about their future spouses when I pray for potential future spouses for them. This is the two things I pray for any potential future spouse of my kids, that they would love God wholeheartedly and love others selflessly. If that’s true in their lives, then that will be good for my kids. Even as I pray that for my kids, knowing that will be good for a spouse. This is what we pray for most in our lives, in others’ lives, that others would love God wholeheartedly and love others selflessly. Don’t you want those two things to be true in your life? So let’s pray in a fresh way for that today.
Matthew 22:35–40 Encourages Us to Pray for this Reality in Our Lives
God, we pray that our lives would be marked by these two commandments. We want to love you with all our heart, with all our soul, with all our minds. God help us, teach us to love you in this way. Wean us off all lesser loves and help us to love you supremely, wholeheartedly, more than anyone, anything else in this world, even as we meditate on your love for us and your greatness. Yes, this is the great and first commandment because you are the greatest, because there is no one like you. You are God.
Even the people I love most in this world, my wife or my kids, they don’t compare to your greatness, to your glory, to your beauty, to your majesty. I love you and want to love you with all my heart, soul, mind. And God, I pray this over every single person listening right now, that this would be true of our lives, that you would help us to know you in such a way. The love for you with everything we have is the only thing that makes sense. And flowing from this, that you would help us to love others selflessly. To love our family, our friends, our neighbors, our enemies in a way that reflects your love for us.
Praying for the Hmong Shua People
That you would help us to love the nations in this way. God, we pray today for the Hmong Shua people. God, we pray so many Hmong people, hundreds of thousands, millions of them who have little to no knowledge of your love in Jesus. Lord, we pray for the spread of the gospel to them and we pray that you would raise up men and women and children, families who will go to the Hmong people from among the nations and share your love with them, that will pay the price to love them as themselves.
And we pray for that all across unreached peoples around the world. That they would know your love through people who love them selflessly. God, help us today to be a picture of Matthew 22, verse 35 through 40. Love for you with everything we have and love for others that reflects your love for us. God, may it be so. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.
David Platt serves as a pastor in metro Washington, D.C. He is the founder of Radical.
David received his Ph.D. from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary and is the author of Don’t Hold Back, Radical, Follow Me, Counter Culture, Something Needs to Change, Before You Vote, as well as the multiple volumes of the Christ-Centered Exposition Commentary series.
Along with his wife and children, he lives in the Washington, D.C. metro area.
