“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
February 22, 2023
The three letter word “all” packs a punch. God is to be loved with all of our being. As new Christians the implications of this probably did not fully grip us. Nor did it the two million Israelites who were poised to enter the Promised Land. God’s rules for them were etched in stone. Their pledge of allegiance to the Lord God would come back to haunt them: “All that the Lord has spoken we will do!” (Exodus 19:8). There’s that word “all” again. But what does all this mean to us? We too live in a hostile neighborhood of nations and a world that has no time for God. In the midst of which God is to be loved with a determined will and compelling affections (“with all your heart”). The heart is the home of our willing and longing. That’s where resolve is launched. When lovers say, “I love you with all my heart,” it will take time and trials to determine the measure of such a pledge. Running hard after God means making decisions which acknowledge His holiness and supremacy. It is choosing to be obedient. We must not forget the element of enlisting our feelings. Loving God is not a cold-hearted, robotic response to the Savior who laid down His life for us. D.A. Carson pins us down with what it means to be dominated by our feelings for God: “(This) is a function not of some alleged inherent incapacity of affections to be commanded but of our moral weakness.”
H
“O Lord, you have no equal. I owe my complete allegiance and devotion to you. I don’t realize deeply enough what it means to go all out in serving you. I want to love you more.”