"Regardless!" -2

"The LORD bringeth the counsel of the heathen to nought: He maketh the devices of the people of none effect." (Psalms 33:10) Besides, there are actually two ways to look at this verse; where some might look at the negative meaning, as in how God makes His ways to trump over the ways of man, as if that is really all that negative; or, we could examine the positive manner in which God fixes things that man seems to keep messing up, especially our love for Him and for one another! There were two commands that Jesus spoke of, by which doing them, and all the other commands would be fulfilled, including the writing of the prophets; this is found in three of the Gospels, Matthew, Mark and Luke; however, John breaks it down in his epistles, making the writing of the prophets come to life in the way that we view our salvation. In Matthew 22:36-40, Jesus is tempted by a Pharisee / lawyer, who asked, "Master, which is the great commandment in the law?"; hoping to get some kind of answer pertaining to the customs of law, such as observing the Sabbath, or paying a tithe, or having no idols, this lawyer of the law was looking to trip Jesus up over something that was debated among many of the religious leaders, but was something of little importance with God, because to break any portion of the law is sin, and with God, sin is sin, period. Within the answer that Jesus gave were two very important principles when it came to love: that love must be directional, and it must be sacrificial. The sacrificial part of love is not all that hard to comprehend, that just requires denying ourselves for the sake of God and others; but the directional part of love, that's a little more complicated, and tends to get muddled up by ourselves getting in the way of the direction we are to be loving. Okay; let's look at what Jesus said in response to the question: "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets." (Matthew 22:37-40) The directional part of our love for God requires fulfilling the "thy" part of "the Lord thy God"; making God thy God, thy Master, thy Owner, thy Lord; in other words, He is not just God, but He is my God! Some people can spend their whole life serving God, but they never have that personal relationship with Him in their life, and never really have that directional contact with their Lord and Master; it's all based upon their sacrifice and nothing else; and in the process, it becomes a self serving love, which they count as their own righteousness; a righteousness that is counted as filthy rags unto God. Secondly, there is the point of what constitutes our "neighbor"; because our neighbor is more than just the person that lives next door to our house, but constitutes anyone by which we are forced to have a relationship with, whether that might be through family, work, or any other form of social contact; including those that might be considered to be our enemies, or those in which we have conflict or disagreement with. (Boy, is God really speaking to my heart right now!) "We love Him, because He first loved us. If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother (or sister) whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen? And this commandment have we from Him, That he who loveth God love his brother also." (1 John 4:19-21)