Chapter 3
Chapter 3
Love with heart, soul, mind, and strength
“Love the Lord your God.”
Deuteronomy 6:5
One of those two great commandments is that we should love God. So, what does God desire when he asks us to love him? What does God long for, that we should love him with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength?
Wholehearted, not half-hearted love
When we love with all our heart, we love wholeheartedly, not half-heartedly. We love with passion, commitment, and complete and utter devotion. We are loyal to the one we love. The relationship we have is our greatest treasure, valued above every other thing in our life. When we love wholeheartedly, we would do anything and give up anything for the one we love. It is the kind of love God offers to us and the kind of love he desires from us. He just wants a loving relationship with each of us.
Most married couples do not stand for their partners developing intimate relationships with others. Nor do they like being neglected, playing second fiddle to the golf club, the greenhouse, or the bicycle. Just like any spouse, God tells us he is a jealous God.[1] “Worship no god but me” is the first of the Ten Old Testament Commandments. God does not stand for us worshipping other gods, whether they are the pagan gods of the Canaanites or the Greeks, or the gods of power, money, influence, or self-indulgence.
Many will know what it is like to give your heart to someone and not have that love returned. Why should God feel any different?
Loving with all our soul
God has given us five senses, touch, taste, sight, hearing and smell, yet love cannot be sensed in any of these ways. Love is an emotion. Love is something we feel inside, something we touch with our hearts. Love changes our behaviour, drawing us towards the one we love, heightening our concern for their wellbeing.
In his relationship with his people, God desires the kind of loving, intimate relationship that is akin to a marriage. When God spoke to Jeremiah of a New Covenant, he said:
“The days are coming,” declares the Lord, “when I will make a new covenant with the people of Israel and with the people of Judah. It will not be like the covenant I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt, because they broke my covenant, though I was a husband to them,” declares the Lord.[2]
To Isaiah, God said;
“For your Maker is your husband—
the Lord Almighty is his name—
the Holy One of Israel is your Redeemer; he is called the God of all the earth.”[3]
The imagery of a wedding, of a marriage between God and his people, is picked up again in the book of Revelation:
“Let us rejoice and be glad and give him glory! For the wedding of the Lamb has come, and his bride has made herself ready.”[4]
And
“I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God.”[5]
I have been married for over 40 years. I know my wife loves me. However, the nature of love is such that I cannot prove to you that my wife loves me.
She is kind, helpful, supportive, gives me nice presents on my birthday, she even tells me she loves me. She cares for me when I am ill, and she is sad when I am sad. But that is not proof of love. Others may also be kind and supportive, giving me presents on my birthday, but that does not mean they love me in the way my wife does. If I could prove her love for me, that would somehow diminish it; it would lessen our relationship. Indeed, it would not be a relationship. It would be a fact that I would continually want to test to make sure she did still love me, rather than just knowing it in my heart. That would ruin the relationship because she would wonder if I loved her.
When the Apostle Paul wrote about love in his first letter to the Corinthians, he said that love trusts. Knowing, without proof, is part of what that means and is part of what it means to love God with all your soul.
To love God with all your soul means loving God with all your being, your emotions, your thoughts and feelings, and your body. Loving with all your soul means loving from within, feeling the other’s pain when they are in distress, rejoicing in their achievements and successes. Loving with all your heart and soul is a love that feels the joy and pain of the other without knowing why, except that you are feeling inside of you what they are feeling.
Loving with all your soul is a love that bursts from within. It is a love that in all you do and say encourages, affirms, comforts, and builds up. It brings joy to you and the one you love, cementing the relationship, building unity, oneness, and that sense of belonging together.
As the Psalmist wrote, “Praise the Lord, my soul; all my inmost being, praise His holy name.”[6]
Mindfulness
Although we sometimes say that love is blind, God does not want us to love him without thinking, but to love with reason and intellect. God asks us to love him with all our mind.
If we love a sport or an artist’s work, we care enough about it to find out more. We often read about that sport or artist, go to see the sport in action or the artist’s work. We become knowledgeable about how the sport has developed, who have been its key characters, what its challenges are and what might be done to meet them. If we love an artist, we will devote time and energy to reading about their work and their life, what and who influenced them, which techniques they used or developed. We would find out as much as we could, so we understood them and their work.
Similarly, loving God does not mean giving up knowledge and understanding. Indeed, loving God with all one’s mind means seeking to know God, to listen to his word, and to live in ways that are in accordance with his teaching and his desires. So, loving with one’s mind will include the study of God’s word as given to us in scripture, plus speaking and listening to him in prayer. It also involves working out what attitudes, values and actions are consistent with how we discern what God is saying to us, and understanding God’s will for our lives, for others, and the whole of creation.
The Apostle Paul wrote this to the faithful people of Rome; “offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship. Do not conform to the pattern of this world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.”[7] That word, ‘test,’ is a translation of the Greek word dokimazō. Its meaning carries with it a sense of finding out the worth of something by putting it to use or testing it in actual practice.
Loving God with all our mind is about getting our own attitudes and values in tune with his, making our priorities his priorities. A loving relationship with God shows us the way to live. Love is transforming.
Love with strength
The Apostle Paul encourages us to give up our own desires and goals, to turn away from conforming to the ways of the world and how the world determines how we should live. He encourages us to think, to use our minds, and use the different gifts God has given us to do the work God has called us to do. In that way, our daily lives become lives devoted to the one we love, God.
The Apostle Peter puts it like this,
13 Therefore, with minds that are alert and fully sober, set your hope on the grace to be brought to you when Jesus Christ is revealed at his coming. 14 As obedient children, do not conform to the evil desires you had when you lived in ignorance. 15 But just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do; 16 for it is written: “Be holy, because I am holy.”[8]
Eugene Peterson interprets these verses in his contemporary language version of the Bible, The Message,[9] like this:
13-16 So roll up your sleeves, put your mind in gear, be totally ready to receive the gift that’s coming when Jesus arrives. Don’t lazily slip back into those old grooves of evil, doing just what you feel like doing. You didn’t know any better then; you do now. As obedient children, let yourselves be pulled into a way of life shaped by God’s life, a life energetic and blazing with holiness. God said, “I am holy; you be holy.”
A love that does not conform to the ways of the world requires strength of mind and character. Indeed, it requires the kind of strength that is only given to us as a gift of the Holy Spirit. The Apostle Paul sees this strength as like a set of clothes that are to be put on each day – clothing ourselves with Christ as he poetically puts it.[10]
In his letter to the Ephesians, Paul wrote, “You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; 23 to be made new in the attitude of your minds; 24 and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.”[11]
Indeed, the letter concludes with the image of armour protecting and giving strength that we may be able to stand firm in our love for God, fearlessly speaking up for him.[12]
Love, an act of worship
Loving with all one’s heart, soul, mind, and strength can be summed up in the word, ‘worship.’
The Psalms urge and encourage us to worship, giving God praise, adoration, and honour. Psalm 108;
“My heart, O God, is steadfast;
I will sing and make music with all my soul.
2 Awake, harp and lyre!
I will awaken the dawn.
3 I will praise you, Lord, among the nations;
I will sing of you among the peoples.
4 For great is your love, higher than the heavens;
your faithfulness reaches to the skies.
5 Be exalted, O God, above the heavens;
let your glory be over all the earth.”
1 Chronicles 29 records a prayer of David;
10 “Praise be to you, Lord,
the God of our father Israel,
from everlasting to everlasting.
11 Yours, Lord, is the greatness and the power
and the glory and the majesty and the splendour,
for everything in heaven and earth is yours.
Yours, Lord, is the kingdom;
you are exalted as head over all.
12 Wealth and honour come from you;
you are the ruler of all things.
In your hands are strength and power
to exalt and give strength to all.
13 Now, our God, we give you thanks,
and praise your glorious name.”
The Bible gives us an image of praise and worship right through to the final book of Revelation. The vision John is given of the Holy Throne Room is one of worshipping God. He writes that day and night the heavenly creatures never stop saying;
“‘Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty,’ who was, and is, and is to come.”
Whenever the living creatures give glory, honour and thanks to him who sits on the throne and who lives for ever and ever, the twenty-four elders fall down before him who sits on the throne and worship him who lives for ever and ever. They lay their crowns before the throne and say:
“You are worthy, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honour and power,
for you created all things, and by your will they were created and have their being.”[13]
These passages teach and challenge us about what loving God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength means.
Worship, however, is not only praying and singing songs and psalms. Worship is a full-time constant act that demonstrates our love of God in every activity of our lives. Loving God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength is made real through our attitudes, values and thoughts, what we say and what we do with our abilities, resources, and time. Loving God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength is about putting this love into action.
The Apostle Paul encourages us to offer ourselves as living sacrifices[14] and that all we say and do should be done with thanksgiving and praise to God.[15] Indeed, the Apostle Peter tells us that as a people who love God, we are called by him to live our lives in praise and in ways that enable others to recognise God working in us and through us so that they too will give glory to God.[16]
With love, we will be at one with God, and he will be at one with us, so we will not fear our eternal future, for love drives out fear because love is eternal. God’s will for the world is that people should live that love, and in so doing, they transform not only their own lives and that of others but the very life of the world itself.
Points for reflection
1. God says, love me with all your heart, soul, mind and strength. That challenges us to ask;
How often do I communicate with God?
How often do I read God’s word?
How often is prayer a deep and meaningful experience for me?
Do I try to discern God’s will for me and try to act upon it?
Do I feel that God is my constant companion, or am I seldom conscious of God’s presence?
Is it important to me that others love God too? Do I try to share my love for God with others by how I live and by telling people about Jesus?
2. Reflecting on God’s love for us, the Apostle John wrote,
“We love because he [God] first loved us. If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother.”[17]
Prayer
Loving God, my desire is to be with you, to know you walk beside me every day. I love that you are there to comfort and protect me. I love that you are there to share my joy. I love to praise you, Father God. You are wonderful and mighty, powerful and Holy. I love you from the very depth of my being. The very thought of you brings me delight, and I long to know your innermost thoughts. I love you with every breath, with every blink of my eyes, with every beat of my heart. All praise, glory and honour be to you. May your name be exalted throughout the earth. Amen.
[1] Exodus 20:5
[2] Jeremiah 31:31–32
[3] Isaiah 54:5
[4] Revelation 19:7
[5] Revelation 21: 2–3
[6] Psalm 103:1
[7] Romans 12:1–2
[8] 1 Peter 1:13–15
[9] Peterson, Eugene The Message copyright © 1993, 2002, 2018 by Eugene H. Peterson.
[10] Romans 13:14
[11] Ephesians 4:23–24
[12] Ephesians 6:10–20
[13] Revelation 4:8–11
[14] Romans 12
[15] 1 Corinthians 10:31 & Colossians 3:17
[16] 1 Peter 2:9–12
[17] 1 John 4:19–21