“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’”
Mark 12:30
As humans, we all have different ideas and preferences when it comes to giving and receiving love. There is a whole language that has been developed around how we love each other. We try to communicate love to others in a way that makes sense to us, and that they understand and are able to receive at the same time. We think about how to love and be loved a lot in our culture, but have you ever thought about how to give love to God? How do you love God? Mark 12:30 tells us to:
“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’”
In the passage this verse is contained in, a religious leader is asking Jesus what the greatest commandment of God is. This is the answer that Jesus gives to him; Love God with your whole self, with everything that you are. In this whole self, he presents four “all your” statements that we can look at to see what it means to love God with our whole selves. We are to love God with all our heart (affections), soul (spirit), mind (intellect), and strength (actions). To love God with all of our affections, means that God is our ultimate love. The bible tells us that our love for God should be so great, that our love for everyone and everything else looks like hate. To love God with all our spirit means to love God through worship and praise. To love God with all our intellect means to grow in our knowledge of the Lord through reading and studying the Bible. To love God with all your actions, means to live in obedience to God. All of us naturally express love towards God more in one of these ways more than others, but God asks us to love him with our whole selves. Which of these areas can you grow in loving God more today?
My Prayer For You
Father, I thank you that you perfectly love us, and that you have given us the ability to love. I ask that you would help us to love you with our whole selves as you desire us to. Amen
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