Marriage and Family Meditations XLI (41)
Psalm 104:34 May my meditation be sweet to Him; I will be glad in the LORD.
Cornerstone Ministries Napa Valley
Marriage–Christ and the Church
Learning to Love God with All our Heart, Soul, Mind, Strength
Hi to All Family and Friends,
My last post was about God’s desire to have a love relationship with each one of us. We saw that God’s greatest commandment according to Jesus was that we are to “love God with all our heart, all our soul, all our mind and all our strength.” Jesus said that there is a second commandment like the first: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Then He said: “There is no other commandment greater than these.” And also, “On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.”
Meditating on this passage from Mat 22 and Mark 12, I believe, is taking me through one of those spiritual growth spurts. It is very challenging to think about the degree to which I do or do not demonstrate my love for God by the way I live my life. As I have thought about this passage I realize that while I do love the Lord Jesus and have tried to serve Him faithfully, my life doesn’t even begin to reach the degree of commitment that is implied by the challenging command to love God with, “all my heart, all my soul, all my mind, and all my strength.”
Given the fact that I know of no one who lives up to the totality of love that this command requires, (it is hard to imagine anyone even claiming to live up to this command), it seems that we can make one of two choices: 1. Give up and go away discouraged and defeated, feeling condemned and shaken in our faith or… 2. Consider God’s mercy and grace and loving forgiveness in Christ Jesus and seek earnestly and diligently to learn how to love God more and more each day. This is the promise and hope held out to us in passages like Ephesians 2: 8 -10. “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.”
When we understand who we are and the purpose for which God created us in Christ, we can live our lives with loving obedience and submission to Christ Jesus. We have been saved by Jesus, God’s gift. Our life became God’s poiēma (work of art or workmanship). We are under His direction and control. He has redeemed our lives for Himself to mold and shape into whatever He wants to make of them. We realize that we are not independent of God in any area of our lives. We have no right to live our lives as though they belonged to us. He alone is our Creator; He is Lord of our lives, our God and Savior; aside from Him we realize that we have no life.
All Our Hearts
So how do we learn to love God with “all our heart”? The biblical use of the “kär-dē’-ä” (heart) reveals that it is the center of all physical and spiritual life in mankind and refers to the seat of our thoughts, passions, desires, appetites, affections, purposes and endeavors.
It seems clear that first we must recognize where the focus of our “heart” is. What have we set our thoughts, passions, desires, and appetites on, and what is our purpose day by day? What is the focus of our endeavors? Are we involved in this world with our “hearts” set on pleasing God and accomplishing His good works? Or are our “hearts” divided and unfocused, being centered in our own whims and desires, our own temporal purposes?
If we honestly see that the vast majority of what occupies our hearts is not directed by and focused on serving God, but rather ourselves, then this should help us to see how we need to rethink what our lives are accomplishing. Our family, our work, our finances, our recreation, our talents and abilities can be seen as “ours”, or it can be seen as the “good work” that God has given us to glorify Him and serve His eternal purposes, in loving obedience more and more with “all our hearts”.
May we all be faithful in living the loving life He has given us!
Blessings and Love in Jesus Vince