LOVE THE LORD WITH ALL YOUR HEART

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. -Matthew 22:37 (ESV)

In Exodus 20, when Moses gave us the 10 Commandments, the first three laws were related to humankind’s relationship with God. (Exodus 20:1-7)

I am the Lord God:
-You shall have no other gods before me.
-You shall not make for yourself a carved image or likeness.
-You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain.

These were not merely religious commandments given to the Israelites, but laws that were given by God to set up a proper working relationship between God and humans and within our society.

Jesus later defined these three commandments saying simply, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.” -Matthew 22:37 (ESV)

LOVE THE LORD WITH ALL YOUR HEART

Understandably, our hearts are more than an organ that pumps blood throughout the body. It’s the place where our emotions and desires begin—forming our personality and our will. Proverbs 4:23 tells us that out of the heart come the issues of life. And the prophet Samuel informs us that man looks on the outward appearance, but God sees the heart (1 Samuel 16:7). Then Jeremiah tells us that the heart that no one sees is desperately wicked (Jeremiah 17:9). Over in the New Testament, Mark 7:21-23 makes a list of some of these evil things that ooze out of our hearts that sometimes we are not even aware are there.

Do you think your heart is good? If you have children in the house, there is a simple test to see what’s in your heart. If you do not have children, insert spouse, boss, neighbor, or church member into the following scenario.

Imagine you are fixing something (use anything really important to you), and it is very valuable, maybe precious or priceless. The thing you are doing is taking a lot of your attention. It’s intricate work. You’ve been working on it for far too long, but you are about to get to the end. If only this and that will come in alignment, then you will have completed the task and will be able to share your great accomplishment with others. Hold still. Almost. BAM! The door flys open your six-year-old is talking a mile a minute, and about the time you steady your hand to finish the task, he grabs your arm, and all is ruined.

What’s your reaction? What comes out? Well, whatever you feel at that moment, whatever oozes from your lips, or thoughts that form in your head is what’s in your heart, squirting out like a messy tube of toothpaste. Yuk!

So, if we are so evil and don’t know how horrible we are, how in the world can we love God with that evil, nasty heart?

The answer is not in this world, of course. We cannot do this on our own. Isn’t it funny that the thing that God wants from us He always provides?

1 John 4:19, “We love because He first loved us.” God creates a new heart in us when we receive salvation (Psalm 51:10), and we use that new, tender, soft heart to worship the Lord our God. However, we still have to be proactive in guarding it against the mind, which has its own problems (Proverbs 4:23).

LOVE THE LORD WITH ALL YOUR SOUL

Our souls are eternal (Matthew 10:28). No one can kill our soul, even if they kill our body. Our souls can be saved or damned (Matthew 16:26). When we leave this earth, our souls will be the part of us that goes with us. Our soul is us. The soul is who we are.

Jesus died on the cross to purchase redemption for our souls (1 Peter 2:25). God added 3,000 souls to the church in one day at Jerusalem (Acts 2:41). James 1:21 tells us to save souls that we must receive the gospel in the Bible. To love the Lord God with all your soul, you must be born again.

LOVE THE LORD WITH ALL YOUR MIND

Our mind is our motherboard-the control center. “As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he,” the Bible says. (Proverbs 23:7) It’s the thoughts, the intellect, the knowledge nuggets that we download daily into our brains. Our thoughts can be good or bad. We still have the old nature that continues to battle for preeminence even though God has redeemed us. It doesn’t want to serve God; it wants to serve self. However, we must not allow our minds to corrupt our hearts (Proverbs 4:23).

To love the Lord God, we must have the mind of Christ (1 Corinthians 2:16). When Jesus was here on earth, He said His purpose was to do the will of His Father (1 John 2:15-17). So, if we have the mind of Christ, we will want to do the will of the Father, too. But how can we do that?

be prayerfully dependent on God -1 Thessalonians 5:16-18
read the Word of God and meditate on it daily -Psalm 1:2
daily renew our minds -Romans 12:2

EVIDENCE OF LOVING GOD WITH OUR WHOLE BEING

When our soul is secure in Christ, and our thoughts are actively thinking thoughts like Christ. Our hearts continue to be softened by the Holy Spirit living in us and there will be evidence of the change that is taking place.