Shadowing Practice: Love Jesus More Than You Love Anything - Learn English Speaking with Video
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In this session together on what Jesus demands from the world,
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let's think about the relationship between our love for God and our love for Jesus.
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Those are two foundational commands, demands, in the Gospels.
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we all know what Jesus answered to the question, what's the first and great commandment?
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Matthew 22, 37.
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The first and great commandment is you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and mind,
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and other gospels say, and strength.
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So loving God with your heart and all that you are is the first and great demand of Jesus.
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And then in Matthew 10, 37, it's interesting how these verses are rememberable,
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22, 37, 10, 37, whoever loves mother or father more than me is not worthy of me, Jesus says.
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Whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.
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So now you've got two powerful, deep, life -transforming commands.
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Love God the Father with all your heart, soul, mind, strength, and love Jesus more than you love children, more than you love parents,
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surely more than you love anything.
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And my question is, what shall we think about those loves?
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In fact, I have four questions.
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One would be, what's the relationship between them?
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Another would be, what's the nature of the love?
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Another would be, where does it come from?
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How do you get to be this way?
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And the last would be, how important is it?
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So let's take those one at a time.
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What's the relationship between loving God and loving Jesus?
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Now you may think, why is that a big deal?
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Well, maybe the reason it's on my front burner is because it is massively relevant for Muslim evangelism.
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I bet you didn't think I was going to go there.
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What?
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Listen, one of the big issues we face over
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and over again in a multicultural situation where lots of religions are coming together is, don't we all worship the same God?
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And you go through Jesus, I go through another prophet.
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So here's what Jesus says.
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John 8, 42.
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Jesus looked right into the eyes of the Pharisees, the Jewish leaders, and said if God were your father, you would love me.
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He's saying to the most religious, the most God -oriented
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Old Testament saturated people on the planet you don't know him.
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He's not your father.
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In fact, he goes so far as to say you're of their father of the devil.
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I mean, this is just mind -boggling.
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What's the litmus paper for knowing whether somebody is a lover of God?
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Answer, do they love Jesus?
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Do they embrace Jesus for who he really is?
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Not just some human teacher, not just some prophet alongside other prophets, but I am the son of God.
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So that's the first one.
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John 8, 42.
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What about John 5, 42?
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There it is again.
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8, 42 and 5, 42.
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Jesus says to those same leaders, I know you don't have the love of God in you.
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I have come in my Father's name and you don't receive me.
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You see the implication?
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you don't have the love of God in you.
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How do I know?
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You don't receive me.
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So here I am dealing with a Muslim person who says, oh, I worship the true God just like you worship the true God.
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Jesus would say, you don't know the true God if you don't receive the Son of God.
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So the relationship, the answer to the first question, what's the relationship between loving God and loving Jesus?
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You can't have the one without the other.
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Loving Jesus is the test of whether you love God.
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Loving God is the test of whether you truly love Jesus.
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So here's the second question.
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What is the nature of this love?
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Now, here's what I have in mind.
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Is love mainly doing what Jesus said?
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So you love Jesus if you do what he said.
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or is it deeper and have to do with the heart and the affections?
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He said, if you love mother or father more than me, you're not worthy of me.
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If you love son or daughter more than me, you're not worthy of me.
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Which means he's thinking of the love of Jesus like the love of your children.
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Well, you don't love your children by doing what they say, right?
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They're your treasure.
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You won't die for these children.
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They are precious to you.
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You won't sell them for billions and billions of dollars.
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Your children are your treasure.
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If Jesus isn't a better treasure, a higher treasure, you're not worthy of Jesus.
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I had a teacher in college who made me read a book called Situation Ethics.
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And in it, the argument was made, and every student seemed to be so wowed by this argument.
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love cannot be an emotion or an affection because it's commanded and you can't command the emotions
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and i'm i'm reading i'm 20 years old and i'm reading this thinking
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that doesn't sound right to me well it's not right
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and the reason it's not right is because premise number one is false
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Of course, Jesus commands the emotions.
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The Bible is filled with commands of the emotions.
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We should fear.
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We should be thankful.
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We should be compassionate.
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We should be earnest.
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We should fear the right things.
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We should hope.
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All those are emotions.
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Of course, God has the right to command our emotions.
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The fact that we're so corrupt and so dead
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that we can't do the right emotion is not God's problem that's our problem.
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It's our corruption.
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So the question is, isn't love for Jesus more than doing?
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And people will quote what?
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I think it's John 14, 15, if I remember correctly.
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John 14, 15, which says, if you love me, you will keep my commandments.
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And I've had so many people say to me, there, right there, it says so.
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If you love me, you'll keep my commandments.
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There it is.
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Love is obedience.
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It's not feeling any particular thing for Jesus.
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It's just doing what he said.
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To which I respond, that's not what you just said it said.
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It says, if you love me, then you'll do this other thing called keeping my commandments.
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Loving Jesus is deep and foundational and transformative because you treasure him above all things.
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And then because of that, you do all that he commanded commanded.
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So my answer to the question, what's the nature of the love is yes, of course it would include obedience,
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but oh, it is not less than being transformed by a love of treasuring,
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admiring, delighting in, being satisfied by this most beautiful treasure of all.
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Like Paul said in Philippians 3, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Jesus.
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Third question.
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Where does that come from?
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And let's just get one answer from Jesus.
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How do you get to this place?
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Remember the story in Luke seven about the Pharisee who asked Jesus to come to dinner.
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And so here he is.
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He didn't wash Jesus' feet.
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He didn't kiss Jesus.
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He didn't do anything to show affection for Jesus.
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They're reclined around the table.
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You remember how they ate
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In those days, the table would be about that high off the ground.
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You'd lean on an elbow, your feet would be sticking out behind you, and you'd eat like that.
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And suddenly, there's this woman of the street, a prostitute, leaning over Jesus' bare feet, weeping.
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And the tears are falling on his dirty feet, and she's taking her hair and washing Jesus' feet.
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I mean, this is incredibly provocative.
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And the Pharisee is bent out of shape and says, if you knew what kind of woman that was, if you were a prophet, you'd know.
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You'd know.
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And Jesus said, let me tell you a little story, Mr. Pharisee, Simon.
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A man had two debtors.
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One owed him $5 ,000 and one owed him $5 ,000.
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He forgave them both, which will love him more.
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And the Pharisee says, well, the one that he forgave more, I suppose.
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And Jesus said, that's right.
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When I came in here, you didn't kiss me.
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you didn't wash my feet she from the time I came in has wept over my feet
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washed them with her tears wiped them with her hair because she has been forgiven much
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so where does it come from what's your answer to that question where does it come from
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It comes from being stunned by being loved by God, right?
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It comes from being overwhelmed by the person of Jesus dying on our behalf and rising again, though we have no merit at all in ourselves.
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When that grips you, then you will taste what it is to treasure Jesus
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and delight in Jesus and be satisfied in Jesus.
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Which leads to the last question.
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How important is that? and Jesus said
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if you don't love me more than you love your parents you're not worthy of me
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if you don't love me more than you love your children
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you're not worthy of me what does it mean not to be worthy of him
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that means you won't have him if you don't love Jesus you won't have Jesus
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Paul put it just as starkly as possible in 1 Corinthians 16 22 too.
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He who does not love the Lord, let him be accursed.
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Christianity, what Jesus demands from us is not most deeply and most fundamentally decisions of the will.
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That's later.
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Deeply and most fundamentally is this new birth,
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deep, profound transformation of what we treasure, what we love.
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And if it isn't Jesus, then we're not worthy of Jesus.
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And being worthy of Jesus doesn't mean deserving Jesus.
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It means being suitable to be in his presence.
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When he's your supreme treasure, that's where you belong.
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So, Father, I ask that love would be awakened because of what you have done first.
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We love you because you first loved us.
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We praise you for that, and as these friends discuss this massive issue of loving you and loving
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Christ, make it happen.
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I pray in Jesus' name.
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Amen.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This speaking lesson is built on the video “Love Jesus More Than You Love Anything”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: Jesus, worthy, loving, treasure, emotion. This video has 166 sentences and 1680 words to shadow. The speech runs for 12:06. The speaker talks at a steady 139 words per minute, a comfortable pace for shadowing. 87% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English, so the vocabulary is easy to follow. 28 of its 166 sentences are questions, so it is good practice for question intonation and short answers.
Key vocabulary in this video
15 words from the video worth learning, with pronunciation and meaning:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| worthy adjective | /ˈwɝ.ði/ | Having worth, merit, or value. |
| treasure noun | /ˈtɹɛʒəɹ/ | A collection of valuable things; accumulated wealth; a stock of money, jewels, etc. |
| emotion noun | /ɪˈməʊ.ʃən/ | A person's internal state of being and involuntary physiological response to an object or a situation, based on or tied to physical state and sensory data. |
| wash verb | /wɑʃ/ | To clean with water. |
| prophet noun | /ˈpɹɑ.fɪt/ | Someone who speaks by divine inspiration. |
| worship noun | /ˈwɝ.ʃɪp/ | The devotion accorded to a deity or to a sacred object. |
| forgive verb | /fɚˈɡɪv/ | To pardon (someone); to waive any negative feeling towards or desire for punishment or retribution against. |
| affection noun | /əˈfɛk.ʃən/ | The act of affecting or acting upon. |
| deeply adverb | /ˈdi(ː)pli/ | To a deep extent or degree; very greatly. |
| whoever | /huˈɛvɚ/ | Who ever: an emphatic form of who. |
| tear verb | /tɛɹ/ | To rend (a solid material) by holding or restraining in two places and pulling apart, whether intentionally or not; to destroy or separate. |
| gospel noun | /ˈɡɑspəl/ | The first section of the Christian New Testament scripture, comprising the books of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, concerned with the birth, ministry, passion… |
| lean verb | /ˈliːn/ | To incline, deviate, or bend, from a vertical position; to be in a position thus inclining or deviating. |
| owe verb | /oʊ/ | To be under an obligation to give something back to someone or to perform some action for someone. |
| transform verb | /tɹænsˈfɔɹm/ | To change greatly the appearance or form of. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| go through verb | To travel from one end of something to the other. | |
| come together verb | /ˈkʌm tʊˈɡɛðɚ/ | To assemble; to congregate; to combine. |
| stick out verb | To protrude. |
Sentences worth repeating
Short, complete lines from the video that you can reuse in everyday conversation:
- One would be, what's the relationship between them?
- Another would be, what's the nature of the love?
- How do you get to be this way?
- You see the implication?
- How do you get to this place?
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Conditional sentences if + clause, will/would + verb — a condition and its result | if God were your father, you would love · if you love me, you will keep · If you love me, you'll keep |
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | was made · is filled · being transformed |
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | have come · I've had · has been forgiven |
| Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing | person who says · woman that was · both, which will |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 52 contractions and reduced forms, such as don't, didn't, you're. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “th” sounds: worthy /ˈwɝ.ði/, thankful /ˈθæŋkfəl/
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: treasure /ˈtɹɛʒəɹ/, emotion /ɪˈməʊ.ʃən/, wash /wɑʃ/, worship /ˈwɝ.ʃɪp/, affection /əˈfɛk.ʃən/
- Long words — get the stress right: incredibly /ɪŋˈkɹɛdɪbli/, transformation /ˌtɹæns.fɔɹˈmeɪ.ʃən/, implication /ˌɪmpləˈkeɪʃən/, compassionate /kəmˈpæʃənət/, foundational /faʊnˈdeɪ.ʃə.nəl/
How to practise with this video
- Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
- Shadow it sentence by sentence at normal speed, repeating each one until your rhythm matches the speaker.
- Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like worthy, treasure, emotion.
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.