Priesthood Leader Message
Demonstrating Our Love for the Lord through Service
Our love for the Lord is demonstrated in our love and service to our neighbors.
The Bible tells us in the Book of Matthew that a lawyer asked Jesus a tempting question. He asked Him which was the greatest commandment in the law. Jesus answered, “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” (Matthew 22:37–38).
Love for God implies love for our Heavenly Father and for his Son Jesus Christ. Interestingly, Jesus specifically mentions that we should love them “with all [our] hearts”. The heart is the reservoir of human feelings and it is obvious that the Lord wants our love to come from the heart; from within. He knows that sometimes we express our love by word and deed, but He did not say to love Him with all our words but with all our heart. One way we show our love for the Lord is by keeping His commandments. He said, “If ye love me, keep my commandments” (John 14:15).
Our Heavenly Father has shown His love for us by offering up His Only Begotten Son as a sacrifice. As His children, He does not ask us to express our love for Him by making a sacrifice as He did. Rather, He wants us to be willing to do what He commands us. What He commands us to do is to follow the example of his Son Jesus Christ, to obey His commandments and to love and serve our neighbors. Elder Jeffrey R. Holland taught, “So we have neighbors to bless, children to protect, the poor to lift up. . . .
“We have wrongs to make right . . . and good to do. In short, we have a life of devoted discipleship to give in demonstrating our love of the Lord.”1
In his talk, Elder Holland asks each of us to imagine ourselves before the judgment seat, trying to answer the Lord’s question: “Did you love me?” In the same vein, I try to imagine Jesus’s conversation with Simon Peter as if it were with me: “Do you love me? Do you love me even when you are going through trials? Do you love me by loving and serving others?”
In Matthew 25, we learn that when the Son of Man shall come in his glory, He shall set the sheep on his right hand because of all their good deeds toward Him. The righteous will then ask Him when they did all these things and He shall answer, “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.”2 Our love for the Lord is demonstrated in our love and service to our neighbors.
Elder Gerrit W. Gong said that “‘the least of these’ is each of us.”3 There are, of course, those around us who seem to be the least of the least: they are the little children who are defenceless, the elderly who yet have lost their ability to care for themselves, friends and family members who may be limited in one way or another to provide for their spiritual, physical or temporal needs and who need our help.
When we love God whom we do not see with our human eyes, we look for opportunities to love and do good to our neighbors whom we see. I testify that I have personally been blessed and found joy each day when I reach out to “one of the least of these”.
Sometimes, simple acts like a short complimenting text, a word of encouragement, and listening to someone in need makes a difference.
Recently, one of the brothers whom I interacted with when I was serving as a stake president a few years ago sent me an email. He wrote: “Each of your words have helped me get back on track and have also inspired me with new ideas that have brought me great miracles and blessings and have turned me into a better person than I was before. Thank you for your love and care in strengthening such a simple brother as myself . . . The love you have shown me has helped me to learn and continue to learn. I am a member of the elders quorum presidency, committed and devoted to the work in my unit; I am a loving husband-to-be who will [soon] be sealed in the holy temple before our Heavenly Father.”
I am grateful for the many precious blessings I have received individually and in my family through small quiet acts of service to our neighbors. May each of us respond to the invitation to love God and His Son Jesus Christ with all our hearts by keeping His commandments and finding opportunities to love and to serve others.
Eustache Ilunga was named an Area Seventy in April 2018. He and his wife, Mamie, are the parents of four children. Elder and Sister Ilunga live in Kinshasa, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.