Created to Love God with Your ALL

“Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.

─ Deuteronomy 6:4-5 ESV

Even before God formed the foundations of the world, He knew you. He desired a relationship with you, with His family. When He brought His chosen family out of Egypt and freed them from slavery so that they could live in relationship with Him, He established a covenant with them. He set the terms of the covenant relationship He desires in the law, or the Ten Commandments. The guidelines He set forth pointed all of His family toward love and relationship with God, the Father.

In our verse today, you are encouraged to love the Lord with all you are. You are created to give all your focus, all your attention, all your purpose to God. This is also echoed in Jesus’ reply when He was asked what is the greatest commandment? He said, “And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.” Mark 12:30-31 NKJV).

Let’s start with the heart. To love God with your heart means to love God with your emotions. It means loving Him through the ups and downs of life, in the hard places as well as the good times.

To love God with your soul is to experience, with great intensity, a knowing in your Spirit that you were created by the One and only God. It’s that feeling you have when you settle down and become quiet, deep within you, you just know He is.

To love God with all your mind means shifting your thoughts from self-focus to a higher perspective. It’s moving your perspective from a focus on your world to a higher viewpoint, so you can  see things from your Creator’s way of thinking. Renewing your mind is an important way to love God.

And to love God with all your strength is to do so with all your energy, with every physical faculty, and with every possibility of our nature.

Simply put, another way to understand our verse for today is to seek God more than anything or anyone else.

Today’s One Thing

Consider how you love God today? Are you giving Him all of you? Read today’s verse again and spend time in prayer with God. Ask Him to reveal to you in what ways you can give ALL of yourself to Him.

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