One day my mother helped throw her littlest brother out of our "haymow."

The haymow (the "loft" where we stored the winter’s hay high up under our barn’s roof) was one of the farm kids’ favorite play places.

Our cats loved the haymow too. There they could run, jump, and chase each other to their hearts’ content. That day one of the friskiest felines misjudged the edge and fell out. All five youngsters watched, fascinated, as it twisted, turned, somersaulted, and finally landed on its feet, unhurt, on the wooden "driveway" a story-and-a-half below.

"Did you see that!?" the kids asked. Their next question was perfectly logical (well, almost): "Do you suppose a person could land on his feet like that?"

Those budding test engineers could only think of one way to find out. The other four (including my mother) grabbed their youngest brother’s arms and legs, dragged him kicking and and screaming to the edge, threw him out, and watched to see what would happen.

Results? There were two. Gilbert didn’t land on his feet. (Amazingly, he didn’t break any bones either.) And it was about two weeks before any of the other four children could sit down again!

What does that have to do with loving our neighbors? It’s simple. Real life can throw any of us "out of the haymow" at any time. Sickness. Layoff. Divorce. Accidents. Earthquakes. Hurricanes. Those and thousands of other events may make "safe landings" impossible. And then the Bible teaches we are to be there to pick each other up, help mend any broken bones, and get each other back on our feet, healed.

Why should we love our neighbors?

If two of your children were twins, would you give one most of your attention and ignore the other? Serve the first a heaping plate at mealtime and give the second a few leftovers? Clothe one well and dress the other in hand-me-downs?

Of course not! You’d treat them both alike, wouldn’t you?

Jesus taught that there’s a set of nearly-identical twins in the Bible: the twin commandments to love God and love our neighbors.

He emphasized how alike those twins are. So shouldn’t we honor him by treating them exactly that way? Shouldn’t we give much the same attention to studying both? Teaching both? Living both?

Certainly, that would please God!

Do we?

Perhaps your church does. I hope so!

Yet consider my experience. I loved the churches I’ve attended. They were warm; wonderful; "alive." Worship was beautiful, inspiring, uplifting. We felt God love us and learned to love him in return. We saw and experienced genuine miracles.

But, looking back, we fell short in one vital way. We loved the first "twin" wholeheartedly. We lavished "food, drink, and clothing" on him. But, with a few beautiful exceptions, we paid little attention to the second.

Why? Speaking for myself, I knew we should love the second "twin" too. But I thought that just meant being nice to anyone who lived near me. I heard many rich sermons on loving God. But I don’t ever remember a single one that explained loving our neighbors.

I wasn’t alone. Rick Warren, pastor of California’s Saddleback Church and author of The Purpose Driven Life, asked "How did I miss that? I went to Bible college, two seminaries, and I got a doctorate. How did I miss God’s compassion for the poor?" (Timothy C. Morgan, "Purpose Driven in Rwanda," Christianity Today, October 2005, quoted in Make Poverty Personal by Ash Barker, Baker Books, 2009.)

Like Warren, I never realized that the Bible talks more about the poor than any other "neighbors." Those poor include immigrants, orphans, widows, and sometimes even church workers. Nor did I realize how many other kinds of "neighbors" existed. I had no idea how many ways God taught us to love them. I knew neither the promised blessings of obeying, nor the curses of failing to!

It seems many other Christians were like me:

• When one national Christian conference asked attendees about their priorities, not one answer mentioned any Biblical part of "loving our neighbors!"
• In the eight years I managed a Christian college library I never saw one book on it (now, thank God, the number is growing rapidly).
• Many churches don’t even mention it in their statements of belief or lists of volunteer tasks.

Have vital parts of "loving our neighbors" become "forgotten commandments?" Is Richard Stearns of World Vision right when he calls them "The Hole in our Gospel?" Just possibly, yes.

If we honestly want to follow Jesus, we need to change that.

Finally God got my attention, by "clubbing me over the head" more times than I want to count. (I seem to need that a lot.) I began "digging" to see what the Bible really said. I found Scriptures I never knew existed. Verses I was living, and others I wasn’t. Demanding faith challenges. Calls to selflessness and action.

That search changed my life. And it led to this book, which is based on over 3,000 Scriptures and includes many of my own family’s experiences. I hope those experiences will show that to genuinely love our neighbors we must convert our faith into real-life actions. And that as we do so, God may give us marvelous, unexpected, deeply moving experiences.

Those experiences take us past theory, to reality.

What’s the best way to learn about love?  Is it to read a book?  Or to fall in love? Which has the greatest impact - watching a rocket launch on TV?  Or personally seeing the astronauts’ fiery, thunderous climb into space?

Experiences strengthen our faith. One pastor told me "the man who has an experience is never at the mercy of the man who has a theory."

The early Israelites followed God as long as their leaders experienced his works:

"Israel obeyed the Lord throughout the lifetimes of Joshua and the other old men who had personally witnessed the amazing deeds the Lord had done for Israel." (Josh. 24:31; Judg. 2:7-9; also read Psalms 22:30-31)

How can we experience loving both God and our neighbors? Let’s find out.

What are the Bible’s most important commandments?

Jesus’ answer appears in three Gospels, and is reinforced in the fourth.

"Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. A second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the other commandments and all the demands of the prophets are based on these two commandments." (From Matt 22:36-40, NLT; also read Matt. 19:18-19, Mark 12:28-31; Luke 10: 25-37).

In John, Jesus raises the standard even higher! He doesn’t merely say "love others as yourself," but "I demand that you love each other as much as I love you." (John 15:12, 13:34-35)

That’s a lot of love!

"Loving God" first appears in Deut. 6:4-5: "O Israel, listen: Jehovah is our God, Jehovah alone. You must love him with all your heart, soul, and might."

Loving "neighbors" goes back to Lev. 19:18: "Don’t seek vengeance. Don’t bear a grudge; but love your neighbor as yourself, for I am Jehovah." Later in that same chapter, Moses singles out one kind of "neighbor" (foreigners), and urges Israel to "love them as yourself" (verses 33-34).

Also read: Deut. 10:12-13, 30:6, Joel 2:12-13.

What kind of love are we to give God and our neighbors? The Greeks called it "agape" (pronounced ah-GAH-pay), a selfless, freely-giving love. Greg Boyd calls it "not a feeling one has ... rather a commitment one makes, a stance one takes toward another, and an activity one does ... a kind of love you can have ... when the other is your enemy ... the kind of love God had for us while we were yet sinners and the kind of love we are commanded to have toward all others. It is the kind of love God was aiming at in creating the world." (Boyd, Repenting of Religion; Turning from Judgment to the Love of God. Baker, 2004, p. 24-25.)

Did you notice? What we believe is important. But neither passage Jesus said was most important talks about belief! They both talk about what we should do!

Even in a gospel of faith, "doing" is crucial.

"Remember, it is a message to obey, not just to listen to. So don’t fool yourselves." (James 1:22; also see Hosea 10:12, James 2:20; John 14:15-16, John 14:23-24, John 15:9-10.)

And what does Jesus say we’re to do?

Love God!

Love our neighbors!

"...What is really needed to build the church is love." (1 Cor. 8:1.)

What’s love like?

Is there a better answer than Paul’s?

"Love is very patient and kind, never jealous or envious, never boastful or proud, never haughty or selfish or rude. Love does not demand its own way. It is not irritable or touchy. It does not hold grudges and will hardly even notice when others do it wrong. It is never glad about injustice, but rejoices whenever truth wins out. If you love someone, you will be loyal to him no matter what the cost. You will always believe in him, always expect the best of him, and always stand your ground in defending him." (1 Cor. 13:4-7)

Did you notice some words Paul didn’t include? For instance, "approve" or "agree." Did Teen Challenge founder David Wilkerson approve of the drugs, sex, and violence that filled the lifestyles of the gang kids God called him to help? Not at all! But he loved those youths deeply, and as a result saw many of their lives changed. God calls us to love our neighbors whether or not we agree with them or approve of all they do.

Nor did Paul mention "zeal." It’s hard to genuinely love God without zeal. But it’s easy to be zealous without love. Our zeal must stay centered in love, both for God and for our neighbors. I’ve met zealous, intellectually committed ministers and laymen who showed no love. And when love is absent, we quickly get into trouble, right up to the point of fighting wars in the name of our religion.

How can we grow to love God?

He gives us each our own unique experiences. My wife Yvonne’s grandparents regularly took her to an excellent church with a caring minister. Yet she never personally met God there.

By age 27 her lungs had deteriorated badly. To prolong her life, her doctor ordered her to move far from home, to a warm climate beside a warm ocean. Her response? She prayed for God’s help and pledged her life to him.

Don’t many of us make similar promises? How many of us keep them? But Yvonne did. She moved to Florida (where I’d taken a job one month earlier) and became active in a church young adult group. We met the following spring, and were married that same summer.

But though she was now an active Christian, her life was still a mix of old and new. For instance, she practiced astrology enthusiastically.

That lasted one year. We’d moved to San Diego. Yvonne was pregnant. Both sons from my first marriage were with us: one willingly, the other not. Turmoil caused Yvonne’s labor pains to start several months early. At her wits’ end, she threw herself on the altar at our small church and cried "God, help!"

And God answered - in two ways. He filled her with his Holy Spirit, though it took us ten years to realize that. And when we asked our pastor how to help my older son, he referred us to a gentle, grandmotherly lady who lived both the "fruit" and the "gifts" of the Holy Spirit.

Right then, Ruth was sick. It was a week before she was well enough to see us. But she shocked us. She told us that, while she’d prayed for us, Jesus had appeared to her in person and told her in detail what to tell us! She proved it by describing everything that had happened in our home during that week! And she told me the painful steps I’d have to take to prevent a miscarriage.

Astrology? Yvonne never mentioned it again. She’d seen something better! She rapidly grew to know and love God. Though I’d been a Christian longer, she soon surpassed me.

As for me? I grew up with grandparents who never went to church, and I rarely did either. I first heard of religion when a cousin walked into my upstairs bedroom and asked whether I was Catholic or Presbyterian. I’d never heard of either one, but didn’t think my five-year-old tongue could repeat the impossible-sounding word "Presbyterian," so I said "Catholic."

Another cousin, Kermit, did try to touch the few kids in our isolated north woods neighborhood. He built a small log-cabin Sunday School, by hand, on a nearby hill. I enjoyed it. But, despite his good efforts, I was an atheist when I reached my early teens.

Then our school bus routes changed, and a friend on the new bus began nagging me to go to his church with him.

I resisted. The idea turned me off. But Jack didn’t quit. Finally, as much to get him off my back as anything, I went.

There I saw people who were joyful! And filled with love! They told of genuine miracles that had happened to them. They’d had real experiences with a real God.

My atheism couldn’t survive that love, that joy, and those personal experiences. There I experienced the "new birth."

But birth was only the beginning! Growing to know and love God took time. Lots of it.

How can we learn to love God?

First, want to love him.

Be honest. Be open. Admit "where you are."

Think about how you and your children love each other. Do you spend time together? Hug? Talk? Ask questions? Do the same kinds of things with God. Do them daily! How would you feel if your children always watched TV, but only talked with you once a week?

Pray. Keep it simple. Use your own words, but remember the pattern of the Lord’s Prayer. (Matt. 6:9-13, Luke 11:1-4): Praise. Give thanks. Express love as honestly as you can. Talk. Ask "what do you want me to do today?" Pray for forgiveness, and for help for you and your neighbors. End with more praise.

Learn about God. Read his "letters and diaries," the Bible. Use a good, clear modern-language version (there are many).

Finally, obey him. Love and obedience go together.

"The one who obeys me is the one who loves me; and because he loves me, my father will love him; and I will too ..." (John 14:21, 14:15; also see Isa. 29:13-14)

When David instructed his son Solomon to build the Temple, he told him "Now try with every fiber of your being to obey the Lord your God." (1 Chron 22:19).

As we reach out to him, he touches our spirits, and our love for him grows. Our lives change. "It is not our love for God but his love for us." (1 John 4:10). "So you see, our love for him comes as a result of his loving us first." (1 John 4:19.)

Also read: John 14:23-24, 15:10, 1 John 2:3-6, 3:21-24, 4:16-18..

No. The 3,000-plus verses in this study come from every book in the Bible. Over 2,000 are from the Old Testament, which Christians, Jews, and Muslims all embace. That means two-thirds of these verses come from all three heritages. Is God is calling all of us to remember to love all of our neighbors?

But the New Testament heavily emphasizes love. "Don’t just pretend that you love others: really love them ... Love each other with brotherly affection and take delight in honoring each other." (Rom. 12:9-10)

Strongly.

Do we love and help our families? The poor? Widows? Orphans? Immigrants? Government officials? Sick? Elderly? Members of other churches? Prisoners? Our enemies? We’re loving Jesus. (John 14:21).

"We cannot love God unless we love each other ... Heaven is a banquet, and life is a banquet, too ... where there is companionship. We have all known loneliness, and we have learned that the only solution is love. It is not love in the abstract that counts. Men have loved a cause ... but not ... the brothers right next to us." (Doris Day, quoted in ePistle, e-newsletter of the Evangelicals for Social Action, 1/22/2008.)

Should we love the poor in India? The homeless in Haiti? The man down the street who’s lost his job and may lose his house? The lady in the next block who’s blind and homebound? The sick child whose single mother can’t earn enough to care for her?

Jesus told us that to love him we must love, and help, all of these.

If we don’t love both God and our neighbors, do we really love either one?

Does "loving our neighbors" mean to "feel" love or to "do" love?

We can feel love for our neighbors. Peter said "gladly letting God have his way with you ... will make possible ... for you to enjoy other people and to like them, and finally you will grow to love them deeply." (2 Pet. 1:6-7)

Yet the "agape" love of Scripture teaches us to act, whether we "feel" or not. We’re to be kind; help; give time, food, money, clothing, and housing; visit, comfort, and encourage - whatever we’d do if we were ministering to Jesus himself.

"But if someone ... has money enough to live well, and sees a brother in need, and won’t help him - how can God’s love be within him? Little children, let us stop just saying we love people; let us really love them, and show it by our actions. Then we will know for sure, by our actions, that we are on God's side... (1 John 3:l7-19)

In agape love, feeling and action unite. James and John say we must act to show our love. (See John 14:15, 14:21, 14:23-24; 15: 9-14; and James 1:22, 2:14-17, 2:20, among others.) Paul stresses that those acts must be caused by love. "If I gave everything I have to poor people ... but didn’t love others, it would be of no value whatsoever." (1 Cor. 13:3)

Biblical love means learning the real needs of our real neighbors. It means asking "If that was Jesus, how would I help him?" It makes us reprioritize our actions, time, and money; and give of ourselves in a consistent, mature way. That loving starts in our families, but reaches out to our communities, state, nation, and world.

The Bible teaches ways like these to "do" love:

Kindness: "your kindness has so often refreshed the hearts of God’s people." (Philemon 1:7; also read Job 6:14, Psa. 37:3, Prov. 3:3, Isa. 28:12, 1 Cor. 16:14-18, Col. 1:10, Jude 1:2.)

Forgiveness: "Be gentle and ready to forgive; never hold grudges. Remember, the Lord forgave you, so you must forgive others." (Col. 3:13; also verses like Prov. 17:9,  Cor. 2:10-11.)

Patience: "Be patient with each other, making allowance for each other’s faults because of your love." (Eph. 4:2; see also 1 Cor. 13:4, 2 Thess. 1:3-6.)

Courtesy: "They must not speak evil of anyone, nor quarrel, but be gentle and truly courteous to all." (Titus 3:2; another example is Phil. 4:5.)

Mercy: "You should practice tenderhearted mercy and kindness to others." (Col. 3:12; other verses include Psa. 18:25, Prov. 27:10, Matt. 9:11-13, 18:33-35.)

Helping: "In response to all he has done for us, let us outdo each other in being helpful and kind to each other and in doing good." (Heb. 10:24; also read Deut. 22:1-4, Job 22:29-30, Prov. 12:12, 17:17, Isa. 58:4-12, Rom. 12:13, 16:1-2, 16:6, 2 Cor. 8:13-15, Gal. 6:2-3, 1 Pet. 4:8-11, 3 John 1:5-8.)

Providing justice: "I want to see a mighty flood of justice." (Amos 5:24; also note Psa. 106:3, Prov. 21:3, Isa. 5:7, 56:1, 59:16, Jer. 9:23-24, 22:3-5, Ezek. 45:9-10, Hosea 12:6, Amos 5:15, Mic. 6:8, )

Doing good: "you yourself must be an example to them of good deeds of every kind." (Titus 2:7; see also Psa. 37:18, Luke 6:31, Gal. 6:7-10, Eph. 5:15-16, 1 Thess. 1:2-3, 2 Thess 3:13, Titus 2:14, 3:8, James 3:13, Rev. 14:13.)

Giving: "They should ... give happily to those in need, always being ready to share with others whatever God has given them." (1 Tim. 6:18-19; also read Josh. 22:7-8, Prov. 21:25-26, Isa. 32:5-8, Matt. 19:21, Mark 10:17-21, Luke 6:36-38, 11:41, 1 Cor 16:1-3, 2 Cor. 9:1-2, 9:6-15, Eph. 4:28.)

"It is one of the most beautiful compensations of life that no man can sincerely try to help another without helping himself" – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Shouldn’t we just help people spiritually?

"I saw a little girl who couldn’t go to school because she didn’t have a pair of shoes. I saw an ... old woman dying of cancer in a hovel overrun by rats. I saw a boy who had lost his eyesight and both legs in war ... God, my heart and soul are sick. All I can say is help them, help them." (Marjorie Holmes, I’ve Got to Talk to Somebody, God, New York, Bantam Books, c1969, p. 103-104.)

In 2003 two young Christian college students, Mike Yankoski and Sam Purvis, decided to learn about homelessness first hand by living on the streets of six major American cities. One Sunday morning, hungry, Sam asked a pastor for food. The minister replied, "That’s not what we do here. We’re here to worship. We can’t confuse our purpose." (Mike Yankoski, Under the Overpass, Multnomah Publishers, 2005, p. 148.)

Did Jesus teach worship? Certainly. But didn’t he also tell us to feed, clothe, and house the world’s Mikes and Sams?

Had that pastor let "love your neighbors" become a "forgotten commandment?"

Jesus taught "man shall not live by bread alone" (Matt. 4:4, KJV). Yet feeding the hungry was a vital part of early Christian ministry. It still should be today.

More Scriptures: Ps. 112:1, 112:4-5, 112:9, Eccles. 11:1-2, Ezek. 18:5, 18:7-17, Matt. 19:21, Mark 3:4-5, Luke 12:22-34, 2 Cor. 8;1-l5, 2 Cor. 9:9, 1 Tim. 6:17-19, Heb. 13:16, James 2:8-9, 2:14-17, 1 John 3:17-19. .

Does the Bible mean "love and help our neighbors" literally?

I’ve heard ministers preach that Jesus was speaking spiritually, not literally, when he said "as you have done it to these my brothers, you have done it to me."

Now, some Scriptures are meant to be taken spiritually. For instance:

"Say there! Is anyone thirsty? Come and drink – even if you have no money! Come, take your choice of wine and milk – it’s all free! Why spend your money on food that doesn’t give you strength? Why pay for groceries that do you no good? Listen and I’ll tell you where to get good food that fattens up the soul!" (Isa. 55:1-2.)

But I see no hint that that’s true of the Bible’s teachings about loving and helping each other.

And the same preachers who insisted on "spiritualizing" verses about helping the needy criticized others for "spiritualizing" descriptions of miracles. Was that consistent?

Since my wife claims I’m an intellectual, you might expect me, too, to believe that Bible stories of miracles are "spiritualized."

But I can’t. I’ve seen friends healed of throat cancer; of breast lumps, of humped backs and spinal curvature, and one of a hard, persistent lump on her foot. A lady with an incurable case of hepatitis C asked for prayer at our church. Her next blood test showed no trace of it!

A head injury caused the right half of a friend’s brain to atrophy. Gangrene set in, almost touching the medulla. It was inoperable. He was sent home to die. A year later he walked back into the doctor’s office, completely normal - a healed that began while simply sitting in a church service!

Friends in Gainesville, Georgia showed us "before" and "after" pictures of one of their foster babies. He’d been born blind, with no optic nerves, and only half of his brain formed. In the first snap, his face was blank, mask-like. The second captured him radiantly normal – a genuine Kodak moment! He’d been fully healed after a year’s persistent prayer at their small country church. His Atlanta doctors confirmed it.

Can healing be humorous? One of my Orlando co-workers had been a convinced atheist - with severe lung disease.

But ‘Don’s’ girlfriend was a Christian. She "dragged" him to her church. The pastor mentioned healing. Don’s girl looked at him and raised her eyebrows. He scoffed – too strongly. She elbowed him sharply in his ribs and exclaimed loudly "For heaven’s sakes, Don, get up there!"

Don was still convinced God didn’t exist, so divine healing couldn’t. But now several thousand pairs of eyes were locked squarely on him. The minister asked "Young man, are you ready to receive your healing?" Wondering how to get out of this, but not wanting to "just say no," he finally stammered "I guess so."

Suddenly Don’s lungs felt like new!

But Don still wouldn’t admit God was real or could have healed him. To prove it hadn’t happened, he tried to make himself sick. He got on his motorcycle, unzipped his jacket to let the cold winter air hit his chest full force, opened the throttle, and sped 1,700 miles to Washington, DC and back.

It didn’t work. His lungs stayed well! Then he accepted God. When I knew him he was a radiant Christian.

Has everyone I’ve known been healed? No. Yet I’ve seen and experienced more than enough miracles to make me take the Bible’s accounts seriously.

In the same way, if I’d never seen first-hand the importance of ministering to material needs, perhaps I, too, could "spiritualize" those passages. But my family spent six years living in a tent trailer, homeless despite working for five of those six years. Our personal experiences then, and since, emphatically tell me that Scripture means those passages literally.

Caring more about others than ourselves (as in Luke 12:32-34) may not follow the laws of logic, but it does obey the laws of love. Those laws say, "I trust God to provide for me because he loves me. And I will help my "neighbors" who are in need because I love them." That equation is in divine, not human, balance.

Should we really try to love God (and our neighbors) wholeheartedly?

Why did Jesus tell us to love God "with all your heart and soul and strength and mind?" Isn’t it better to love God moderately?

Can I ask you this? Have you ever watched your favorite sports team play "moderately" hard? Were you proud of them? Did they win? Perennial powerhouse UCLA made that mistake against tiny Wyoming in the 2004 Las Vegas Bowl football game. In sharp contrast, Wyoming played wholeheartedly, "fought every inch," and won!

No man is more famed for producing champions than legendary Green Bay Packers football coach Vince Lombardi. When asked his formula for success, Lombardi once replied, "You’ve got to love each other ... Each player has to be thinking about the next guy ... he’s got to play from the soles of his feet right up to his head ... If you’re lucky enough to find a guy with a lot of head and a lot of heart, he’s never going to come off the field second." (Iacocca, An Autobiography; Bantam Books, 1984, pages 60-61.)

Could Jesus have urged us to love God "with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength," and our neighbors as ourselves, because he wanted us to be champions?

• Loving our neighbors means "doing."

• Loving our neighbors means helping all sorts of people, everywhere, in practical ways.
• Loving our neighbors means practising courtesy, forgiveness, mercy, and giving.
• Loving our neighbors means ministering to both spiritual and material needs.
• Loving our neighbors begins in our families, then reaches out to touch our community, state, nation, and world.
• Loving our neighbors means ministering to others in the same ways we’d minister to Jesus.