“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
May 7, 2025
If it is our aspiration to love God, then we better be sure we know what He is like. He is not some value on a multiple choice chart. He is not a genie in a bottle who comes out to merely give us what we want. He is the true God, “the Maker of heaven and earth, the God who predicts and controls the future, the God who stands opposed to sin, the God to whom we must give an account, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ” (D.A. Carson, Love in Hard Places). This God, our God, is to be loved by taking pleasure in Him to the full extent of our life. “Soul” speaks of that aspect of the human being that thinks, feels, and makes the body act. Our drives (cravings), physical appetites, will, and emotions are to be harnessed in the pursuit of pleasing God. My desire to get things, be something, go places is to be fulfilled with a passion to know God and do what honors Him most. Security and safety can only be satisfied by putting my whole self into obeying His commandments.
H
“O God, my Creator, I know that I was made for you. I need to grow in what it means to put my whole soul into thirsting for you.”