“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 24, 2023
Think of it this way. If you told your spouse, or someone really close to you, that you loved them with all your mind what might that mean? Granted, it does not quite have the affectional ring to it that “with all my heart” has. However, love walks on both feet with a mind that is fully engaged with the person we love. God is to be loved with the full exertion of our mental powers. Love is a way of thinking. It doesn’t just feel. Whereas before we became a Christian our minds were darkened in their understanding, alienated from God. God was our enemy “because of the ignorance” that was in us, “hostile in our minds” (Eph. 4:18; Col. 1:21). Not a pretty picture is it? But being a new creature in Christ, God is our Friend. Loving God with all my mind means growing in my ability to understand spiritual realities. My world and life view is constructed and informed by God’s Word. A loving mind searches the Scriptures, wants to know about God, what pleases Him, what displeases Him. A loving mind memorizes Scripture, sorts out good books to read, movies to see. We must learn how to think in a new kind of way. How exciting it is to experience the thought-lights that come on, opening up the right ways to think about others and how to balance life’s demands.
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“O Lord God of my salvation, fill my thoughts with your thoughts. Replace the old wrong ways of thinking and replace them with wisdom.”