Loving God
From Livestream
by Pastor Nave on February 12, 2017
And one of the scribes came, and having heard them reasoning together, and perceiving that he had answered them well, asked him, Which is the first commandment of all? And Jesus answered him, The first of all the commandments is, Hear, O Israel; The Lord our God is one Lord: And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment (Mark 12:28–30, KJV).
In our relationship with God, we focus more about how He loves us, instead of how we should love Him. Jesus tells us n Scripture there is one thing we must understand: we must love God and there’s a specific way to do it.
Jesus shared the first commandment, quoting Deuteronomy 6:4–5, “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD: And thou shalt love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might” (KJV). We must love God, and there are 4 different ways to do it.
The heart is the place of understanding, and contains the thoughts of the mind and the inward person. When we love God, we love Him with all the passions and emotions that are within us; it’s not just an intellectual love. God has given this innate ability to love, and it’s mostly apparent when it comes to loving earthly things—our children, spouses, sports teams, etc. But, while we express passion in loving other things, God expects the focus of our passion be Him. We must love Him with all of our heart.
The soul is our personal spirit; it’s the part of us that keeps us alive, is who we are, and the life-force that’s within us. God wants us to love Him with our entire life. The way we live our life will tell others a lot about what we love. Our lives are like an epistle to be read by all men. When others take a look at the pages of our life’s book, what are we telling others about the way we love God? We can say what we like, but we live what we love. So, let’s truly love God with all of our souls.
What we allow into our mind matters to God. When we have a relationship with Jesus, He helps us to think differently; He renews our mind and redirects our focus. Before Jesus, we didn’t have the ability to overcome the bad thoughts in our mind or the direction of our thinking. His power working within us helps us to purge the bag thoughts in our mind, and think on the good things (Philippians 4:8). We can command every thought to come unto the obedience of Christ (II Corinthians 10:4–5) and our minds can be renewed by the power of the Holy Ghost.
The New Testament tells us to love the Lord with all our strength, which is slightly different from the Old Testament. Deuteronomy tells us to love God with all of our might. The word might in Hebrew is meod. Meod means a display of strong feeling and passion that grows louder and stronger. Our love for God should be full of strong feeling, passion, and should grow louder and stronger over time. While the world around us continues to wax worse and worse, we are admonished to continue in the things that we know and have been assured of (II Timothy 3:14)—our love for God.
God has blessed us tremendously today with the knowledge of how to love Him, but also so that we never forget how to do so (Deuteronomy 6:7). Today, let’s ask the Lord to show us how we aren’t following His instruction to love Him so that we can change and truly love Him with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength.
