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Matthew 22³⁷Jesus replied: " 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' ³⁸This is the first and greatest commandment. ³⁹And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.'⁴⁰All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments."

In that perfect order it flows. Focus solely on loving God in every way. Through this you will truly become capable of love. Through this you will be able to love your neighbor. 

God is most important above all else. 

Above everything else.

This is what happened...

I cut myself

but I did not bleed

I am only flesh

I am only lust

I am only rage

and hate

and sex

and murder

but it's all sealed inside

frozen in the thickness of flesh

I've been reading the book of James for the last couple of days. As I've reread it, I've realized the extreme importance of keeping God in mind while reading the bible. Keeping God's character in mind. As God certainly cares as much for our hearts as He does our actions, so too should we consider and be aware of God's heart as much as His actions. Not uniquely one or the other (as most of us are inclined to do in order to suit our own comforts) but united, reflecting one another and giving new depth and unseen meaning to the other.

"...Jesus said, "The kingdom of God does not come with observation . . . . For indeed, the kingdom of God is within you" ( Luke 17:20-21  ). It is a hidden, obscure thing. An active Christian worker too often lives to be seen by others, while it is the innermost, personal area that reveals the power of a person’s life."

A Thought. A Prayer.

from journal entry: 9-21-2009

You must get to where you hate your struggles and truly view them as an enemy to your One Love (instead of viewing them as a hurdle to get over for the moment or something you desire but can't have).

Love the Lord so much that you desire to love Him more... and anything that gets in the way of that is to be conquered.

prayer:

"Father, give me spiritual discernment to see beyond what is taught to me, and what I already wish to believe. Allow me to see truth and light even when it counters these things. Make death nonexistent and hate be crushed under my foot."

an undated journal entry transfered to digital

"I woke up 60 times this morning. Each time, crying out for God to please conquer these things. Waking up to lust, disappointment, the strongest urge to check my phone, and the repeated offense of seeing that some pretty girl had not found this loss as unacceptable as I had."

"But this is probably what I needed. That slap in the face to finally get me to leave. I feel like I'm going to die. Like something infused in me has been ripped out, taking slabs of tissue and muscle with it. But just like yesterday, I know what made me bleed. I just act like I don't. 

I lie because a self inflicted wound won't impress a soul."

re: peopleofwalmart.com

I looked at this website a couple weeks ago. I went through pages of it with my roommate, pointing, laughing, having a good old time. Afterward, I thought about it... what the website was, how I viewed it, what effects it had on me. I came to the conclusion that the results of me participating in that sort of entertainment put me into a stance of looking at certain people as subhuman, viewing them not as people but as objects. I quickly noticed the similarity between that stance and the stance that came from my pursuits of pornography. Both things started out as semi-not-so-good, but quickly showed the power to build a wall between me and my fellow man. In both cases, the prevention of my love for these people made way for my new found desire to harm them instead. For the walmart folks it was making fun of people. For the porno girls it was wanting to use them for my own pleasure at their own expense. 

The thing is social outcasts (like the peopleofwalmart), and people with an unhealthy self image (like the girls that do pornography) are probably some of the people that are the most in need of real, selfless love.