Love God with all your heart, soul, mind, strength – discover how…
Love God with your all heart, soul, mind, strength. What does it mean to love God with all your heart, soul, mind, strength?
Do this one thing and everything else follows – it is the Greatest
Love God! Do this one thing and everything else falls in place. Jesus said this is the most important thing we can do in life, it is the greatest! But how?
God Loves You
God’s love for us is unconditional and never ending. Before you can love God with all our heart, soul, mind, strength it is important that you understand how much God’s love you and how high, wide, long, and deep His love for you is. When you begin to understand God’s amazing love you are able to live at peace with God and with others. You no longer feel condemned. You have the joy of the Lord and NOW you can love Him. To love God you first must comprehend His great love for you.
God First Loved You
1 John 4:19 says, “We love Him because He first loved us.” Because God has loved us, not because of anything we’ve done, but because He is love – we now have the ability to love Him.
Commanded to Love God
One day a scribe came to Jesus and asked, “Of all the commandments, which is the greatest?” Jesus said, “The greatest commandment is this: … you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength...” (Mark 12:28-30).
Your Were Created to Love God With All Your Heart, Soul, Mind, Strength
The most important thing you can do in life is love God! Do this one thing and everything else will begin to fall in place. In fact God created you to love Him. Life is not about becoming famous or rich. It’s not about acquiring a bunch of stuff or accomplish great things it is about learning to love God. When you love God first then all those other things will take care of themselves. Jesus said this one thing is the most important – love God with your whole heart – soul – mind – strength. What does that mean and how do we do that?
Love God with All Your Heart
First, Jesus says to love God with all your heart. There are so many things competing for our hearts and attention, but God wants our heart. This is where it starts. The heart refers to the very center or core of who we are – that is our spirit. As a believer our spirit has been born again. It is alive unto God and the things of God. Our spirit is the innermost part of our being. It is by our spirit that we are able to connect with God and hear from Him. (Romans 8:216)
Loving God with all of our heart means continuing to grow in our relationship with with Him. In means that at the very core of our being, our spirit we desire to spend time with Him, talking to Him, listening to Him, following Him, doing what He tells us to do, – it is abiding in Him. Loving God spiritually is beyond the emotion or physical aspect of love. It is much deeper.
Loving God with all our heart means our relationship with Him comes first. “In everything you do, put God first,…” (Proverbs 3:6 TLB) Loving God with all our heart means loving, adoring, and serving God is our priority. It means in the midst of doing life – family, work, school, hobbies, etc. God is at the center of it all and we do life as unto the Lord. (Colossians 3:23)
Love God with All Your Soul
Second, Jesus said love God with all your soul. Often people think of soul and spirit as the same. They will use the words interchangeably, but they are different. Hebrews 4:12 tells us that it is the Word of God that is able to, “divide the soul and spirit,”. Your soul is your will and emotions. We are to love God with the emotion and feelings that love invoke. We should be moved and over whelmed with the emotion of loving God.
We are to love God by choosing to love Him and obey. “If you love Me, you will do what I say.” (John 14:15 NLV) These are acts of our will. God does not force us to love Him. He gives us the freedom to choose, but He has empowered us to love Him. Loving God is not a work, but a response to the overwhelming love He has toward us.
Love God with All Your Mind
Third, Jesus said love God with all your mind. This means focusing our thoughts on Him – His holiness, goodness, His awesome works and creation, etc. We are to love God via our thinking and reasoning, not just our emotions. Proverbs 23:7 says, “As a person thinks in their heart so are they”. It is important to thinking rightly about God. This means we need to have our minds renewed with the Word of God (Romans 12:2) so, that we get rid of bad thinking and replace it with right thinking.
Love God with with All Your Strength
Finally, Jesus said love God with all you strength. This is talking about the physical aspect of our lives. Our actions should reflect and demonstrate our love for God. This means using our time, talents, and treasures in a way that brings glory to God.
God Wants All of You
Jesus makes it clear that God wants “all of you”. He wants your heart, soul, mind, and strength focused on investing in your relationship with Him. It is only by all four of these working together that we truly love God. The great thing is God has empowered us to do it – with His grace working in us (Romans 12:6), with the help of the Holy Spirit (John 14:26), and with His love deposited in our hearts. (Romans 5:5) we are able to love God. It is just a choice we make each day. God love you – so you can love God! Love God with your heart, soul, mind, strength.
