DO YOU LOVE GOD?

 

Mark 12:30

New International Version (NIV)

³⁰ Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’

I love this scripture! It can evoke a stronger, passionate, relationship with Christ. How often we all fall short of this?  Too often I'm afraid. What does this even mean? You might say "I think about God", "I love my God", "He is inside of me!  What do you love, think about, and invest your time in when nobody is watching? God needs your full commitment to draw closer to you.

Let's break this down together.....

All our hearts-

John 14:20-23

New International Version (NIV)

²⁰ On that day you will realize that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you. ²¹ Whoever has my commands and keeps them is the one who loves me. The one who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love them and show myself to them.”

²³ “Anyone who loves me will obey my teaching. My Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them. ²⁴ Anyone who does not love me will not obey my teaching.

Ouch!  It says if you don't keep God's commands, you do not love God. Does that mean we will never mess up? No! Does that say that you should be perfect? Certainly not, we are all born of a sinful nature, so we will always slip up. The best way to understand this is to apply it to our everyday life. Think about the time in your life that you were in love with someone. You know, the gaga eyes, kind of love. You would do anything to please that person. You never wanted to disappoint that person, because you were in love. Your outward actions described your inward affection for that person. This is the kind of relationship God wants to have with you. So, if you really do love God as much as you say you do, your outwards actions will show your affection for Him. Just as a relationship with a person has it's ups and downs, so will your relationship with Christ. You will get distracted by the things of this world. You will upset Him. You will make Him cry, but just as your mate forgave you, God will always be there with arms wide open. His love never fails, His love is perfect, so it will be up to us.

All your soul- 1Timothy 6:11 speaks about “godliness” ,being devoted to God. It is saying to CHOOSE to love God, an attitude of self-devotion to love. It is an exercising of the will (part of the soul) to love God in all situations of life.  Choose to do what is right and do it with the right attitude.

The feelings (of the emotional part) of a person’s make-up will get out of control without a direct use of the will. Many stay in anger, bitterness, resentment, self-pity, hatred, fear, being covetous and such like because instead of loving God “with ALL their soul,” they have aligned their soul against God. This is confirmed by what 1Corinthians 13 says about what love is: Willfully turning your emotions and attitudes by an act of your will.

Instead of retaliating and showing the person who hurt you “how it feels,” you choose to be kind in the midst of showing them what they have done wrong and how they have hurt you. Instead of giving up hope in a situation, you choose to hope and seek a way through regardless of whether or not it turns out exactly as you want. Instead of choosing to be angry, you choose patience, long suffering and endurance. THIS, is loving God “with all your soul.” 

All your mind-  Our mind is our intellect the place where we analyze, figure-out and plan things. The place where knowledge and understanding are analyzed and manipulated to bring about a conclusion or decision.

Loving God “with all our mind” means:

• That EVERYTHING we put in or allow in our minds is right, true and moral.
• That we align our conclusions and decisions based upon the commandments of God and the written Word of God in all situations.

 All Your Strength- Loving God “with all your strength” speaks of the “ultimate expression” of our heart, soul and mind being released together through our bodily functions. It is the outward expression of what is going on within ourselves to the outside world through our sight, speech and physical actions. Loving God with all your “strength” is not just having a strong determination to do something. It is a combined focused forceful excursion of the activities of the heart, mind, soul and will expressed through the physical body toward something or someone until the goal is carried-out or the situation is turned to your favor. In other words, it is the full energy of your heart, what is most important to you, your emotions, will and reasoning ability. Together, with all your knowledge, wisdom, talents and skills specifically focused to carry something out. We can see a formula forming here: God does not want us to love Him with just “parts” of our being, but  will ALL our being, every single moment of every single day. His Great Commandment for us “to love,” is a display of His own personal love for us.