Loving the Lord

In this devotional I am going to talk about love. I know it may sound weird but it is very important, and each of us needs to know about this. It is the key to living a fulfilled life in Jesus.

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The Reason-

In John 14:15 Jesus says “If you love me keep my commandments.” When we love God, we should want to obey Him and what He wants us to do. Jesus was a good example of that, He obeyed His Father, even to willingly die on the cross for our sins! That took a lot of obedience. Would you obey your parents if they sent you to go die for someone? I think all of us would definitely not obey them. Would we obey our parents, even to the death? I don’t believe I’d be able to, but Jesus did. See, He obeyed no matter what task He was sent to do. I doubt any of our parents would ever tell us to go die in place for someone else, but we can learn how to obey them by following Christ’s example. I will go more into depth about obedience later. The reason I am bringing this up now is that the whole reason we live Christian lives and obey God is because we love Him, not because we are forced to.

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Loving the Lord-

If you look at the greatest commandment Jesus ever commanded was, “And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and will all thy soul and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment.” Mark 12:30. We should be obeying this verse. I will explain a little on what this verse means, it’s more than you see at face value.

We are to love God with all our heart, soul and mind.

First let’s talk about loving God with all our heart.  ‘Ek’ is Greek for ‘with.’ In Greek ‘all’ is ‘Holos.’ meaning complete, whole, and altogether. We are to love the Lord completely with are whole hearts. The Greek word for heart is ‘Kardia.’ A Hebrew’s heart meant the center of one’s identity, and the source of their actions. So, you are to love God with all your heart, when you do, He is your identity. You do all for Him and you make sure your heart’s actions please Him. The phrase ‘With all thy’ repeated shows that our love for God has to be deep in all those areas. When it comes to following our heart from a worldly perspective, it is really about following our desires, what we want, and what we feel is best. The contrast is, when you love God with your WHOLE heart, you will follow His desires, do what He wants and believe what He says is best.

‘Soul’ in Greek ‘Psuche’ literally means breath, extended to mean ourselves, part of us, that unseen individuality in identity and personality. ‘Spirit’ in Greek is ‘Pneuma’ which means wind, in Genesis God breathed life into us. The three parts, body, soul, and spirit belong to God. In Hebrews 4:12, it tells us that the soul and spirit separated. They are different. We are to love God with our soul. All of it. He should be our living breath, so that we can’t live without Him. Loving God with all our soul requires us to know Him. When you know someone really well you can say a lot about them. God wants us to talk about Him. Have you ever known someone who was engaged or just married? Well I have, and they just can’t stop talking about that certain person. You may even ask them if they have anything else to say! Since they are fully “in-love” with them, they can’t help but talk (gush really) about their soulmate. If we are in love with Jesus, we will gush about Him, and we will constantly be telling others about Him. Have you ever encountered someone who was really on fire for Jesus, who tells strangers ever day about the gospel, and you can’t have a conversation with them without ending up talking about God? That is because they are “in-love” with Jesus. My grandmother is so much like that, and when I was younger I really wanted to be just like her, and I wanted to have that same close relationship with Jesus! And whenever I spend time with her, I learn more about God and have a bigger desire to do His will. I also want that whenever someone talks with me, they will know by my words and actions that I am a believer of the Lord Jesus Christ. Get to know Jesus, through His word, and when you do that, you won’t have any trouble falling in love with Him!

Greek for ‘mind’ is ‘Dianoia,’ meaning deep thought. We are to keep our minds on Christ.  This doesn’t mean thinking only about Him, it means that our thoughts should be honoring to Him at all times. Loving God with your entire mind means that He is in your brain. Your thoughts are on Him. They are not your own thoughts any more, they are Christ’s. No more are you consumed with your appearance, your position in life, or anything that has previously occupied your brain. Your thoughts are on Christ, and all things that please Him! (Philippians 4:8-9) You remember my example before where someone is in-love? They’re mind is occupied by that person. Don’t you notice that they seem, well staring off in the distance when that person is not around you already know they aren’t really paying attention to what you are saying? Well it should be like that with God, and when He is in the forefront of your mind, all the time, you will share about Him to others. I struggle a lot with having pure thoughts, but the more I fall in love with Jesus, those impure thoughts will turn to loving thoughts of Him! Loving God with your entire mind speaks volumes to others, and they will know you love Jesus.

In Greek ‘strength’ is ‘Ischus’ which means power, might, force, or ability.  So far we have talked about three ways of loving God with our heart, soul, and mind. These are on your inside you cannot see them. Strength is visible, through actions they prove what we believe. Do all for God Col. 3:23, 2 Peter 1:5-7. God want’s ALL of us.  First place in our life should be to love God and desire to please Him in all that we do.

What does this look like in action?

We learned that God has called us to love Him. Now that we know that we must apply it to our lives. How does it impact you? Well first of all you have to know about someone to love them. The first step is to dive into God’s word and search out what it says about Him. This allows you to find out what Jesus is like, and why you will want to love Him.  It doesn’t matter how much you are in God’s word, if you don’t do it for the right reasons. If you just read your Bible to say you did or to look like a “good” Christian, you’ve missed the point and you won’t fall in love with Jesus. You need to read the Bible because you want to learn what God has to say to you and how you are supposed to live and what He says about Himself and what He does.

And this is where prayer comes in. Pray that God would give you a desire to be in His word and learn about Him. Pray that God would fill you with His love and love for Him. Ask that you would fall in love and have devotion to Him.

As you move on with your day think of Him. If you were in love with someone or they were your very best friend, you would think about them throughout the day. Do the same with Jesus! He is your love, and your thoughts should dwell on Him. If you are with a close friend you do things that they like and you try to please them. Since Jesus is the closest and best friend of all, you should live to please Him. Not only when you want to but all the time, He is always there alongside you.  

When you’re in love with Jesus you will want do His will. You won’t need to be told to obey Him, you will obey Him out of love. Jesus tells us how we are to live in His word. When we love Him we will want to imitate Him, which leads us to living a life like He lived. As you make choices and do things throughout your day, you will think of who Jesus is and what He would want you to do in these circumstances. This affects your response to your parents when they ask you to do something, it impacts what you think about and let fill your mind. It also changes what you do in your day and how you spend your time.

Another thing about being in-love with Jesus is that you will want to spend your time on what He wants you to. Sometimes curling up on your bed with a fun book, and a snuggly blanket seems too appealing, sometimes it’s doing a craft or drawing, other times it is watching movies or videos. I am not saying any of this is wrong. What I am asking you is, do you think this is the best way to spend your time? Would God rather have you help your mom with a few extra things that aren’t part of your job, helping or playing with a sibling, writing to a friend of yours or just reading and meditating on scripture? The things I just listed seem to be things that don’t come to mind as often and don’t seem as attractive when you just want to have fun and relax. But these are the things that will be truly worthwhile, and when you finish, you will be motivated to do something else. Often times when you just let your body wind down, and your mind just go blank, it’s hard to get everything up and running again. Be careful what you spend your little “breaks” doing, because that leads to what you might end up doing all day.

Also do your dreams and desires line up with Gods? Are your goals and projects something that will help and change people, and point them towards Christ? Are you investing in things that are earthly and temporal, or heavenly and eternal?

Just think about this for a moment. Jesus placed His life down for you. He died in your place. Okay I know you’ve all heard about it. But think about this, you were going to get pushed off a cliff, with eminent death at the bottom and suddenly a man steps in, pushing you aside and falls off instead. You are able to get away, and be saved from death all because of that man. Wouldn’t you live your life in his memory, thank him over and over for dying in your place? Wouldn’t you devote yourself to his cause and help his family out in some small way to return the favor he bestowed upon you? You would also tell people the story of how he saved your life as well. It’s the same with Jesus you had eminent death He took your place, and now you live because of that. The logical thing to do is to thank Him and devote your life to Him! You should automatically tell others about the incredible and wonderful way your life got saved! God calls us to share the gospel to everyone He shouldn’t even have to ask us, we should do it out of love and thankfulness alone.

To Remember-  

In summary loving God with all our heart, soul and mind, is the key to being like Jesus. When we love Jesus so much more than anything else, we will want to be like Him and to please Him! If we live our life like Christ did, and commit our life and our all to Him, we will hear “Well done” from the Lord. Let Christ come into you, let Him control you, because when He does that, He helps you imitate Himself, and Jesus is very, very good at imitating Himself. If we do it on our own strength and for our glory, we will miss the mark! All the qualities that the Bible tells us to have, we will be blessed with, by being clothed and filled with Jesus and obeying God’s first commandment, to FULLY LOVE HIM!

Live your lives as God calls you to and live it for Him!! It’s not an outward change (though that often fuels the inward) but an inward change of your heart. Live your life for God, as God would want you to! Love Him!

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