Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. Matthew 22:37
I have read this verse time after time after time. You can find it in Luke 10:27, Mark 12:30 and Deut 6:5.
Heart, Soul, Mind….What does it mean to love the Lord my God with all my heart, all my soul, all my strength, all my mind? I’ll give you a clue: In the Greek ‘all’ means all, whole, every. Contemplate with me what that means. ALL
ALL means entire, total, being the utmost possible, every, everything, completely, so much, beyond all doubt.
So I ask myself…do you love God with ALL your heart, All Your soul, All your mind? Before we can answer that we have to know what heart, soul and mind means and determine if we are really giving ALL of those things to the Love of the Lord my God. I’ll make it easy for you and make a list of what ALL of heart, soul and mind consists of:
thoughts, feelings, mind, breath, spirit, ability, might, power, understanding, courage, appetite, bodily: HEART< SOUL< MIND
With all these things we are to love God vehemently, wholly, speedily, diligently, exceedingly…. All
Friends this is not meant as a message of condemnation, or a checklist of where you are falling short but I really believe it is an invitation that brings clarity. There is really no gray area in the word all. I say it often, “Either you are pregnant, or your not”. This call to love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul and with all your mind gives us permission to abandon all to CHRIST! You don’t have to determine if you should give ‘this area’ or ‘that area’ to the Lordship of God. You don’t have to wonder if you’re too ‘Crazy’ in love with Jesus. It is clear. We are to give HIM ALL. So if you wonder about giving him your paycheck, or your time, or your resources, or your heart, or your hurts, or your loved ones, or your thanksgiving. The answer is yes! ALL. Give Him your ALL.
It’s amazing to me that God asks for and seeks to receive our everything. He doesn’t say “Get it together” or “Make it perfect” first. God wants the childlike free flowing abandon of a young artist offering her best crayola picture to her Papa the King. The gift of a snuggle hug, a heart poured out, the scraped knee, the best effort, the grab by the hand, to be included in the daily routine…
Learning to give my ALL.
Tracy, thanks for giving me reason to pause.
Love- Holly