Mark 12 : 30

Mark 12:30:

"Jesus replied, “The most important commandment is this...the Lord our God is the one and only Lord. And you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength."

Haven't we all heard this verse a million times? Heart, soul, mind, strength. Heart, mind, strength, soul.We know, we know; love God above all else. 

If you're like me, you've never really given much thought to the fact that loving God with your mind is very different from loving God with your strength. I pretty much just bundled the four pieces together and decided that love is love. Today's message at church made me think otherwise. Here's the breakdown:


To love God with all your HEART, you have to allow His heart inside of your own. It's this whole, "Break my heart for what breaks Yours," idea. To love God with all my heart, I must love the people around me ("That which you do unto others you do unto Me"). The heart is the center of connection and emotion-- to love God with all my heart means to connect to my neighbors through and with empathy, grace, truth, and compassion.


To love God with all your MIND, you have to train your brain in the ways of the Lord. This means thinking about him often, learning about the life of Christ, reading the scriptures, doing book studies, talking rhetoric and theology with friends. I must fill my intellectual self with the stuff of God rather than memoirs of Chelsea Handler and Huffington Post news articles. The mind is the center of logic and decision-making-- to love God with all my mind means to fill it with knowledge about what's important and how it came to be so.

To love God with all your SOUL, you have to give the Lord time to feed it. We cannot love God with our soul if we never offer it to him and keep it closed off because we're too busy working out or having coffee with friends or sleeping in late. And none of those things are inherently bad. But I must allow God to create the longing for Him in my soul through reflection of His great works and my own great need. The soul is the center of self-awareness and values-- to love God will all my soul means to dedicate the quiet time necessary to allow Him to reaffirm who I am and what I believe.

Finally, to love God with all your STRENGTH, you need to allow the Lord to show you the ways in which you can help others. Not only does this 'strength' mean our own available energy, but also the spiritual gifts that the Lord has given us. I must figure out the ways in which the Lord has blessed me so that I can pour that blessing upon others. Strength is the center of talent and resources-- to love God with all my strength means to spend myself in the service of others using the gifts that He made me to use. 

Kind of life-changing, right? The idea is that each of us has one or two areas which are natural and easy places of love for us, and one or two more that could use serious development. For me, I'm pretty good at the heart and strength, but seriously lacking in the mind and strength categories. This knowledge will allow me to target my own weaknesses and figure out how I want to develop them. It's easy to say, "Of course I love God. I'm active in my church, I was baptized as an adult, I've said the salvation prayer, I sometimes give money to homeless people..." but in looking through this list, do our actions really reflect that we love God wholly? 


Food for thought. Also, major credit goes to my campus pastor Steve Gillen for bringing to our congregation's attention the framework for truly loving God with our hearts, mind, soul, and strength. Hope it's as impactful for you guys as it was for me this morning!