I had an encounter early one morning while worshiping God before work. I had been there for over an hour when the cassette tape I was listening to ended with a loud click. (Yes, this was in the mid-90s.) When the music stopped, the silence suddenly made me intensely aware of God. It was a holy moment. My senses felt alive, and I was overwhelmed by how tangible and weighty His presence was.
As I sat there with a goofy grin on my face, my thoughts raced, and my heart swelled with emotion. It was slowly dawning on me that the God of the universe loved me. I still cannot fully describe the joy that flooded my heart in that moment.
After about two minutes, I could not stay silent any longer. I had to express the rising tide of emotion in my heart. I broke the holy silence and blurted out, “Lord, I love You so much!” As soon as I said it, the Lord asked me in a clear, distinct inward voice, “How much do you love Me, Jack?” Without hesitation, I answered, “Lord, I love You with all my heart!” A few seconds passed, and then the Lord gently replied in that same clear voice, “Jack, that is not enough.”
In an instant, the joy drained out of me. The tangible presence of God lifted, and I felt as though the Lord had struck me in the gut. Before I could sink too deeply into the confusion of that moment, He brought this scripture to mind.
Mark 12:30 And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ This is the first commandment.
Math was never my strong suit in school, but even I could see that loving God with all my heart accounted for only one small part of what He commanded in this verse. I picked up my Bible and kept reading the passage over and over. I realized there were four parts to obeying the command to love God, and I was familiar with only one of them.
What encouraged me was realizing that He was fathering me. He was gently correcting me so He could draw me closer. He was treating me like a son deeply loved by his Father. I was pursuing God and finding love. I was asking for understanding, and He was teaching me what love really is.
He wanted me to know His amazing love for me, and He was waiting for me to pursue Him.
Matthew 7:7-8 “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. 8 For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened.
After a few minutes of adjusting to this new revelation, I had to admit that I did not understand how to love God with my soul, mind, or strength. So, I set myself to study and asked Him to lead me into greater understanding. The first thing He showed me was how He loves.
How God Expresses Love
The first thing God brought to my mind was John 3:16.
John 3:16 For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.
God so loved that He gave.
I immediately saw that the primary expression of God’s love is selfless giving. Now I had to understand how to apply that and give my mind, soul, and strength to the Lord in a way that truly expressed my love for Him.
I began taking a personal inventory. I took a long look at my life and asked myself: What am I giving my attention to? What am I investing my time in? Where is most of my energy going? What kind of fruit are these things producing in my life? How much of myself am I truly giving to God, and how much am I wasting on selfish pursuits?
I began to see that some of the things I was giving myself to were hurting me and hindering my spiritual growth. Worse still, my example was affecting others in the same way. I saw that my family, friends, brothers, and sisters in Christ were all being impacted by my lack of love for the Lord. That realization brought me to tears.
To properly understand how to love God with my mind, soul, and strength, I first had to define these terms according to the original text. I needed to understand exactly what I was responsible for giving the Lord in order to express the love I felt in my heart.
Many of us are familiar with the Greek word “agape,” the God-kind of love. However, that is not the exact word used in this New Testament command.
Mark 12:30 And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ This is the first commandment.
The word for love in the original text here is “agapeo,” the Greek verb form of the God-kind of love. We know from grade-school English that a verb is an action word. Agapeo describes a devoted commitment directed by the will and capable of being commanded as a duty.
Love is an action word. It is known by what it does, by the fruit it produces. Love reveals itself through behavior. Agapeo is God’s love in action.
1 Corinthians 13:4-8a Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; 5 does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; 6 does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; 7 bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. 8 Love never fails.
This passage lists what love does and does not do. It shows us how love behaves, and therefore how God behaves, because God is love.
This passage shows us how to put love into action. We put God into action in the lives of others by how we behave toward them. As we actively give our heart, soul, mind, and strength to the Lord in humble obedience, we are at the same time giving ourselves to loving people well.
Here are the words used in Mark 12:30 as defined in the original Greek text:
1) Heart (kardia)
The word heart denotes the center and seat of our spiritual life. It can also refer to the central or innermost part of something, even when that thing is inanimate. For example, the heart of a tree is the innermost growth at the center of its trunk.
When the Bible speaks of the heart, it is referring to the essence of who we are. To give our hearts to the Lord, we must steward every part of our inner life, taking stock of the other three areas mentioned and making sure we are committed and submitted in every part of our existence.
The heart of a person is affected by the other three parts. If a person’s soul, mind, and strength are wholly submitted in obedience to God, the heart can reach its highest and most noble expression.
2) Soul (psychē)
The soul is the seat of feelings, emotions, desires, affections, and aversions. It is the moral part of our being, designed for everlasting life. The soul differs from the body and is not dissolved by physical death.
We must give our emotions, desires, and affections to the Lord. The emotions we were born with are not the finished work of God in us. Emotional maturity develops as spiritual maturity grows, and intentional growth in this area helps our overall progress in becoming like Christ.
There is no such thing as an emotionally immature and spiritually mature Christian. Spiritual maturity will rise only to the level of our emotional maturity. That is why it is essential to let God rebuild and renew us emotionally, freeing us from the broken emotional patterns we inherited under the first Adam.
3) Mind (dianoia)
The mind is the faculty through which we understand acquired knowledge, feelings, desires, deep thoughts, and our overall way of thinking.
We give our minds to the Lord through the disciplined renewal of our minds by His Word. As we do, we must also protect our minds from ungodly influence and carefully steward what we allow to shape our attention.
Man’s mind was never intended to know good and evil, yet through Adam’s fall, that knowledge entered in. Our capacity as spiritual beings was immediately diminished. Our view of God and of ourselves became distorted. This is why our minds must be renewed in the spirit of our mind.
Ephesians 4:17-24 This I say, therefore, and testify in the Lord, that you should no longer walk as the rest of the Gentiles walk, in the futility of their mind, 18 having their understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God, because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart; 19 who, being past feeling, have given themselves over to lewdness, to work all uncleanness with greediness.
20 But you have not so learned Christ, 21 if indeed you have heard Him and have been taught by Him, as the truth is in Jesus: 22 that you put off, concerning your former conduct, the old man which grows corrupt according to the deceitful lusts, 23 and be renewed in the spirit of your mind, 24 and that you put on the new man which was created according to God, in true righteousness and holiness.
To love God with our mind, we must guard it from worldly influence that floods nearly every form of media and entertainment. The world studies how to influence people and eventually shape their thought patterns. Through advertising, social media, and false narratives driven by agenda, that influence often reaches into our choices and decision-making.
This same pattern has slowly seeped into the Church, producing people with itchy ears. Some so-called leaders now compete to see who can attract the largest following, build the biggest organization, and profit from it.
4) Strength (ischys)
These are our abilities, talents, giftings, graces, and strengths. The word can also carry the sense of forcefulness, power, and might.
God places within each of us the gifts, graces, and natural abilities needed to fulfill our purpose on the earth. Only by laying these at His feet can we fully reach our God-given potential.
We need to ask ourselves some sobering questions.
Are we giving all these parts of our lives to God? What are we giving our minds to? What is consuming our thought life? A hobby? A vice? A relationship? What are we doing with our talents, strengths, and gifts? Are we laying them before God, or using them to serve ourselves and our own ambitions? Are we loving God with everything in us, or withholding parts of our lives in order to love ourselves more?
This line of thinking opens an entirely new level of self-examination. If we are going to love God with integrity, we must give Him every part of our being.
The Word of God must become both a mirror and a microscope, enabling us to be brutally honest with ourselves and bringing us into a deeper realm of accountability. Abiding in His Word opens the way to a deeper, richer, and more intimate relationship with the Father.
Let’s take another look at the New Testament command.
Mark 12:29-31 Jesus answered him, “The first of all the commandments is: ‘Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. 30 And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ This is the first commandment. 31 And the second, like it, is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.“
Notice the difference between how we are commanded to love God and how we are commanded to love our neighbor. There are four distinct aspects to loving God, but only one measure given for loving our neighbor. Why is that?
We are told to love our neighbor as we love ourselves. But what if we do not even like ourselves? What if we hate who we are or what we have become? Many people come to Christ in that condition—self-loathing, hopeless, even suicidal. At first, not much may seem possible in the way of loving others, but we are still called to love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength.
Love comes into our hearts in seed form, and as that seed grows, our capacity to love others grows with it. As our love for God deepens, so does our ability to love our neighbor. If we truly love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, we will not have to strain to love people, because love for others will become the natural overflow of our relationship with the Father.
Our love for our neighbor becomes evident through our love for the Father.
1 John 5:1-3 Whoever believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God, and everyone who loves Him who begot also loves him who is begotten of Him. 2 By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and keep His commandments. 3 For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments. And His commandments are not burdensome.
This verse shows that the clearest way to express love for others is to give ourselves wholeheartedly to loving God. The greatest thing we can do for our family, friends, neighbors, and the world is to submit ourselves to the Father and love Him fully. That love is expressed through wholehearted surrender to the Lord and to His Word.
When we love God with our heart, soul, mind, and strength, we bring every part of our being into a beautiful 4-part harmony of worship that pleases God and becomes one of the greatest expressions of faith available to man. We become a living sacrifice—holy and acceptable to God.
Romans 12:1 I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service.
Great faith is realized where there is great love for the Father.
Galatians 5:6 For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision avails anything, but faith working through love.
Conclusion
In the end, the call to love God is not a sentimental feeling we visit in passing, but a life laid down in full surrender. He is worthy of more than a portion—more than our words, more than our intentions, more than occasional devotion. He is worthy of our whole heart, our whole soul, our whole mind, and our whole strength. When every part of our being is brought under His lordship, love becomes more than emotion; it becomes obedience, worship, transformation, and living proof that God is truly first in our lives. This is the pathway to maturity, the foundation of true faith, and the source from which genuine love for others can flow. May we not stop at loving God in part, but answer His call with everything we are, until our lives become a holy offering of devotion to the Father.
JESUS IS COMING!
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