Word For The Day: Love God With All Your Heart

If you were to summarize all that God requires of you, it would seem like an impossible task. If you were asked to narrow down in one sentence all of God’s demands upon you in relationship to him, what would you say? It seems impossible, but Jesus did it for us, and he put it in the form of a commandment.

And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment (Mat. 22:37–38).

What does the passage mean?

This passage is one of the most important and central passages in the Bible. It was first said in Deuteronomy 6. In the immediate context, Moses reviews the 10 commandments with them and then begins dictating all the laws that would make up the Torah or the Law of Moses. However, the interesting part is that he begins by summarizing the Laws that he is about to give in the statement found in our verse. Then, when we come to Matthew 22, we find the Pharisees tempting Jesus trying to justify themselves but Jesus quotes the Law to show them that if you are to truly love God, it must be an issue of the heart. It is such a big deal because on this commandment depends the whole law; in other words, if you remove this commandment of loving God with all your heart, soul and mind, Christianity is worthless and nothing makes sense.

This is where the core of things is: God wants you to love him with your whole heart, soul and mind and even strength. However, notice that he begins with the heart because that is where the center of our personhood is. He wants the heart of people to be geared towards him, he wants people to love him because if they do, they will obey all the commandments and they will also love their neighbor as they love themselves. In fact, the reason we have thousands of commandments and laws in our constitutions is because men do not obey the greatest commandment of them all. If men loved God with all their heart, soul and mind and in turn, their neighbors as themselves, there would be no need of an established legal system.

What does it mean to me?

First, you must know that you cannot love your God with all of your heart if your heart has not been transformed by the power of the Gospel. If you have never given him your heart and your life, you cannot love him with your whole heart, soul and mind. Therefore, we invite you to trust in him with all your heart for the salvation of your soul; that is the most important decision you will ever make.

If you are already a Christian, the words of Jesus should transform your outlook on sanctification. You are probably trying to follow religious rituals and fabricated ideas of sanctification, but the Lord has made it simple: Love him with all your heart, soul and mind. If you are to please him, you must love him with your whole heart, if you are to be joyful and happy, you must love him with your whole heart, if you are to have a blessed life, you must love him with your whole heart. Now you realize that the reason for your depression, unhappiness, emptiness and bitterness has to do with the fact that you love yourself with your whole heart and not God. You will never be satisfied until you love him greatly. Therefore, I invite you to spend time with him today and to ask him to help you have a heart that loves him above all things and you will experience an amazing transformation of your understanding of sanctification.

God bless you
Pastor Hector