Introduction

Currently we are living in Oklahoma City. We intend on selling our house and moving to Perkins, Oklahoma (10 miles South of Stillwater). We found a church there that has been very inspiring and encouraging to our Christian journey.
We desire to be "whole hearted" Christians.
About 3 years ago, sensing a lack of purpose and maturity in my Christian walk, I prayed and asked God, "what should be the 'one thing' that I purpose with my whole heart to live for?"
The scripture Matthew 22:37 came to my mind, "And He (Jesus) said to him, You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the great and foremost commandment."

I thought, that's it! That is what I need to do. I need to Love God with all my heart, soul and mind. The great commandment is to be completely given to God. He wants my heart, my soul and my mind (that is all of me, not just part of me). I knew that I fell short of that commandment. Even as I am writing this, I know I have far to go. But there it was, the Great Commandment ; the No. 1 thing is to completely love God.

So my next thought was "how do I love God?". So I looked with my concordance and landed on amazing scriptures like this - John 14:6 ( Jesus said) "If you love Me, you will keep my commandments."
I thought, when did they put that in the Bible? I'm joking, but it was like I had read that scripture for the first time.
I think the "IF" must have really stuck out to me. He said "IF" you love me! He said, if I love Him, then this is what will happen, I will obey His commandments. I thought If I don't love Him, then I won't obey His commandments. What a concept; that, my love (if it were genuine) would produce something tangible, like obedience.
Honestly, I wasn't completely aware that Jesus had commandments. In most of the churches I had been in, the only commandments anyone ever talked about were in the Old testament Law or the Ten Commandments. And usually the common thought was "we don't have to worry about commandments, we're under "grace". The word "commandments" was kind of a "bad" word.
But here it was in red letters, "If you love Me, you will keep My commandments. " I thought, "can i even go to heaven if i don't love Jesus?"

I read on to John 15:5 (Jesus said) "I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in me and I in him, he bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing. If anyone does not abide in Me, He is thrown away as a branch and dries up; and they gather them, and cast them into the fire and they are burned.
(I thought, I don't want to be cast away and I don't want to be burned. I thought, so how do I abide in Him?) I read on.
If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit, and so prove to be My disciples. Just as the Father has loved Me, I have also loved you; abide in My love. ( I want to bear much fruit, I want it to be proved that I am His disciple. Again, i thought how do I abide in Him or how do I abide in His love? )
In the next verse Jesus answers, "If you keep my commandments, you will abide in My love; just as I have kept the Father's commandments and abide in His love."

So it appears that Jesus is saying that to abide in His love I must keep His commandments just like He obeyed His Father's commandments. Jesus is saying, this is how it works and I will be your example as to how far to take it. Side note - Jesus was obedient until the end. He went all the way. Philippians 2:8

This was really big for me and it still is. I know that I must be more serious about God's Word and about my Christianity.

So my next thought was, "what did Jesus command?"

to be continued...