“Trust in the
Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding.” Proverbs 3:5
When sports
teams “get in a slump”, they are often directed by their coaches to work on the
fundamentals. Life can get so complicated that we are left to wonder which way
to turn, how to proceed. I had been dealing with such a time when the Lord
pressed upon me to return to the basics. I was struggling with writing even the
beginning of part of my dissertation. In my doctorate classes, I used a technique
to write the many paper for class. God brought before me of returning to this
method. It was a way to “get out of the slump” I was experiencing.
So it is with
our walk with the Lord. Sometimes we can get so bogged down in everything that
we believe we must do to be “good” Christians that we become discouraged and
down. It is then that it is good to return to the basics. The basics are the
foundation guiding us in our relationship with the Father and with others.
Jesus tells us in Matthew 22: 36-40 in easy to understand words the very basics
of what we are to do as Christians. The Pharisees were testing (or so they
thought) Jesus, hoping to trip him up with their questions about what they
perceived as the law, the Ten Commandments, trying to lay a snare for Him. They
wanted to know which was the greatest commandment. Jesus answered with the
foundation of all the law, returning to the basics. “Jesus replied: 'Love the Lord your God with
all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first
and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as
yourself.'”
As complicated
as life is, I am all about the basics. How about you? Do you need to return to
the basics?
Digging deeper:
Galatians 5:14; I John 1:9
