Love God: With All Your Heart
In Jewish tradition there are 613 commandments, 365 negative commandments or prohibitions (do not …) and 248 positive commandments (do …) This correlates to the number of days in a year and the number of bones and main organs in your body, thus representing to honor and obey God with all of yourself everyday. This is a lot of commandments, however, what is recognized as the greatest commandment is what Jesus said, “And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’” – Mark 12:30
This gives a simple, yet incredibly deep and complex commandment. Simply, love God, and love Him with absolutely everything that you are. It carries the same idea as the 365 and 248 commandments that represent following God with all of you every day. However, while, on the surface, this sounds easy enough, or simple enough, what does it really mean?
Let’s look at each of the elements of this commandment. Today we’ll look at “with all your heart”
In the Greek, which is what Mark was written in, the word heart is kardia, which means: thoughts, feelings, middle. Jesus, here, is quoting the commandment that comes from Deuteronomy 6:5 “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.” In the Hebrew of Deuteronomy, the word heart is lêbâb, which means: the most internal organ. The idea conveyed here is that loving God with all your heart is to love Him with the central most aspect of who you are. Deep down at your core, when you peel away everything else, what is left is a love for God.
We use the term “love with all my heart” a lot in society today. It is often used within either a romantic relationship or a parent/child relationship, but, however it is used it carries the same meaning. When we say we love someone “with all our heart” there is an idea that our love is a defining characteristic of ourselves. The things we do, the words we say, the thoughts we think, our desires, our intentions are all shaded with our thoughts and feelings for this other person. They become a part of who we are. They complete us, and if they are, in some way, lost to us, we become broken and incomplete. Our heart is ripped out of our chest. We are broken-hearted. There’s a hole in our heart that cannot be filled. Now, we may not be sincere everytime we say we love someone with all our heart, but that’s the idea that is conveyed with that statement, and it is no different with God.
If we are to love God with all our heart, this is a major act. Again, heart, in this setting, means thoughts, feelings, middle. To love God with all your heart is emotional. It is something that implants deeper than loyalty or logic or duty. It is something that is manifest in our thoughts and emotions.
You may have heard the term “faith over feelings” which conveys the idea that we are supposed to put our faith in God regardless of our feelings because there are going to be times in life when you may not feel like following God for one reason or another, and this is legitimate. However, I believe that God created us with feelings and emotions as well as the capacity for faith and rather than negating one for the other, His intention is for them all to act in unison. If we are to love God with all our heart, this includes both faith and feeling.
If you have someone in your life that you can say you love with all your heart, whether that be a significant other, a parent, a child, even a friend, you know that there are times when that person makes you angry or upset or annoyed. However, that doesn’t mean you stop loving them. The same is true of God. When we love Him with all our heart, we love Him with the full gambit of our emotions. There have been times in my life when I have been broken and sad and angry at God for allowing certain things to happen, but the mere fact that I am angry is indicative of the belief I have in Him, and though I don’t understand or like the situation, I still love Him even in my sadness and anger. There have been times when I have been overjoyed and excited with what is happening in life, and I love God in those emotions as well. Loving Him with all my heart is loving Him with my feelings.
In Ephesians 3:14-19 we read, “For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.”
This is salvation. Surrender before God, acknowledgment of who He is, acceptance of His grace and love, and being filled by Him. What’s so cool here is it talks about loving God with all your heart. When you give your life to Him He fills you, your inner being, your heart, the core of you. God enters your heart, not as some tiny microorganism that physically lives there, but through our loving Him with our middle, our core, who we are. He occupies our thoughts and feelings. We become intertwined with Him as he transforms us into something new, something more and better than we are without Him.
Without Christ, we are incomplete, broken, we have a hole that cannot be filled, but if we give our lives to Him He fulfills and heals us. He fills the hole. So, more than a saying that sounds good “I love you with all my heart” is is a challenge, an invitation, a request to have God become an integral part of who we are.
Love God – With All Your Heart.
This gives a simple, yet incredibly deep and complex commandment. Simply, love God, and love Him with absolutely everything that you are. It carries the same idea as the 365 and 248 commandments that represent following God with all of you every day. However, while, on the surface, this sounds easy enough, or simple enough, what does it really mean?
Let’s look at each of the elements of this commandment. Today we’ll look at “with all your heart”
In the Greek, which is what Mark was written in, the word heart is kardia, which means: thoughts, feelings, middle. Jesus, here, is quoting the commandment that comes from Deuteronomy 6:5 “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.” In the Hebrew of Deuteronomy, the word heart is lêbâb, which means: the most internal organ. The idea conveyed here is that loving God with all your heart is to love Him with the central most aspect of who you are. Deep down at your core, when you peel away everything else, what is left is a love for God.
We use the term “love with all my heart” a lot in society today. It is often used within either a romantic relationship or a parent/child relationship, but, however it is used it carries the same meaning. When we say we love someone “with all our heart” there is an idea that our love is a defining characteristic of ourselves. The things we do, the words we say, the thoughts we think, our desires, our intentions are all shaded with our thoughts and feelings for this other person. They become a part of who we are. They complete us, and if they are, in some way, lost to us, we become broken and incomplete. Our heart is ripped out of our chest. We are broken-hearted. There’s a hole in our heart that cannot be filled. Now, we may not be sincere everytime we say we love someone with all our heart, but that’s the idea that is conveyed with that statement, and it is no different with God.
If we are to love God with all our heart, this is a major act. Again, heart, in this setting, means thoughts, feelings, middle. To love God with all your heart is emotional. It is something that implants deeper than loyalty or logic or duty. It is something that is manifest in our thoughts and emotions.
You may have heard the term “faith over feelings” which conveys the idea that we are supposed to put our faith in God regardless of our feelings because there are going to be times in life when you may not feel like following God for one reason or another, and this is legitimate. However, I believe that God created us with feelings and emotions as well as the capacity for faith and rather than negating one for the other, His intention is for them all to act in unison. If we are to love God with all our heart, this includes both faith and feeling.
If you have someone in your life that you can say you love with all your heart, whether that be a significant other, a parent, a child, even a friend, you know that there are times when that person makes you angry or upset or annoyed. However, that doesn’t mean you stop loving them. The same is true of God. When we love Him with all our heart, we love Him with the full gambit of our emotions. There have been times in my life when I have been broken and sad and angry at God for allowing certain things to happen, but the mere fact that I am angry is indicative of the belief I have in Him, and though I don’t understand or like the situation, I still love Him even in my sadness and anger. There have been times when I have been overjoyed and excited with what is happening in life, and I love God in those emotions as well. Loving Him with all my heart is loving Him with my feelings.
In Ephesians 3:14-19 we read, “For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.”
This is salvation. Surrender before God, acknowledgment of who He is, acceptance of His grace and love, and being filled by Him. What’s so cool here is it talks about loving God with all your heart. When you give your life to Him He fills you, your inner being, your heart, the core of you. God enters your heart, not as some tiny microorganism that physically lives there, but through our loving Him with our middle, our core, who we are. He occupies our thoughts and feelings. We become intertwined with Him as he transforms us into something new, something more and better than we are without Him.
Without Christ, we are incomplete, broken, we have a hole that cannot be filled, but if we give our lives to Him He fulfills and heals us. He fills the hole. So, more than a saying that sounds good “I love you with all my heart” is is a challenge, an invitation, a request to have God become an integral part of who we are.
Love God – With All Your Heart.
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