I had an encounter early one morning while worshiping God before work. I was there for over an hour when the cassette tape I listened to ended, and it gave a loud click as it shut off. (Yes, this was in the mid 90’s) The absence of the music left me in a silence that made me acutely aware of God. It was a holy moment; all my senses were alive, and I was a bit overwhelmed at how tangible and weighty His presence was.
As I sat there with a goofy grin on my face, my mind was racing, and my heart was filled with emotions. It was gradually dawning on me that the God of the universe loved me. I can’t describe the joy that filled my heart at that moment.
After about two minutes, I could not be silent anymore. I had to express this ever-increasing tide of emotion that I was experiencing. I broke that holy silence and blurted out, “Lord, I love you so much!” As soon as I said that the Lord asked me in a clear, distinct, inward voice, “How much do you love Me, Jack?” Without thinking, I promptly said, “Lord, I love You with all my heart!” A few seconds passed, and the Lord gently responded in that same clear voice, “Jack, that is not enough.”
All the joy I was experiencing seemed to drain out of me in an instant. The tangible presence of God lifted, and I felt like the Lord just punched me in the gut! Before I sank too deep into the confusion I felt at that moment, the Lord reminded me of this scripture.
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 was only 25% of what He commanded us to do in this verse. I picked up my Bible, and I kept reading that scripture repeatedly. I realized there were four parts to obeying the command to love God, and I was only familiar with one out of the four.
I was encouraged after He showed me this verse because I realized He was fathering me, giving me a gentle correction so that I can be closer to Him. He was treating me like a son whom He loved dearly. I was pursuing God, and I was finding love. I was asking for understanding, and God was teaching me about love. I was worshiping God, and love is what He revealed.
He wanted me to know His amazing love for me. 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 didn’t understand how to love God with my soul, mind, or strength. So, I set myself to study and asked Him to lead me to a greater understanding. The first thing He did was show me how He loves.
How God Expresses Love.
The first thing God did was remind me of 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 saw right away that selfless giving of ones self was the primary expression of the love of God. Now, I just had to figure out how to give my mind, soul, and strength to the Lord in a way that expresses my love for Him.
I started 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 time in? What am I giving most of my energy to? What kind of fruit are these things producing in my life? How much of my life am I truly giving to God, and how much am I squandering on selfish endeavors?
I began to see that some of the things I was giving myself to were hurting me and hindering my spiritual growth. Even worse is that my example hurt others in the same way. I saw that my family, friends, brothers, and sisters in Christ were all impacted by my lack of love for the Lord. It brought me to a place of many 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 know exactly what I was obligated to give the Lord to express the love I felt in my heart.
Many of us are familiar with the Greek word “agape,” which is the God kind of love. However, that differs from the word used in our 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,” which is the Greek verb for the God kind of love. We know from grade school English class that a verb is an action word. Agapeo is defined as a commitment of devotion that is directed by our will and can be commanded as a duty.
Love is an action word. Love can only be known from the actions that it prompts. Love is as love does. Love is known and revealed by its behavior. Agapeo is God’s love in action, or simply, God 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 things that love does and does not do. This is our instruction on how love behaves. It is also how God behaves. After all, God is love.
This passage tells us how to put love into action. We put God into action in the lives of others by how we behave toward and around them. As we actively give our heart, soul, mind, and strength to the Lord in humble obedience, we at the same time give ourselves to loving people.
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 mean the central or innermost part of anything, even though inanimate. For instance, “the heart of a tree” refers to the innermost growth rings in the center of a tree trunk.
When the Bible talks about the heart, it refers to the essence of who we are. To give our heart to the Lord, we must steward every part of our inner man, taking stock of the other three parts mentioned and ensuring that we are committed and submitted in all areas of our existence.
The heart of man is affected by the other three parts. Suppose a man’s soul, mind, and strength are wholly submitted in obedience to God. In that case, the heart can attain its highest and most noble expression.
2) Soul (psychē)
The seat of feelings, emotions, desires, affections, and aversions. The soul is a moral 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. God did not give us the emotions we were born with. Our emotional maturity develops as our spiritual maturity grows. Consciously developing and growing emotionally will help our overall spiritual progress.
There is no such thing as an emotionally immature and spiritually mature Christian. Spiritual maturity will only rise to the level of our emotional maturity. This is why it is essential to allow God to rebuild and renew us emotionally so we can be free of the emotional makeup we inherited being born under the first Adam.
3) Mind (dianoia)
The mind is the faculty of understanding our acquired knowledge, feelings, desires, deep thoughts, and overall way of thinking.
We give our minds to the Lord by disciplined renewal of our minds to His Word. While renewing our minds, we must protect them from ungodly influence and steward what we give our attention to.
Man’s mind was never intended to know good and evil, yet we gained that knowledge through the fall of Adam. Our capacity as spiritual beings were immediately diminished. Our perspectives about God and ourselves became twisted. Now, our minds are naturally bent toward evil. This is why we 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 with our minds, we must protect our minds from worldly influence that has infiltrated every form of media and entertainment. The world uses science to help them better understand how to influence us and eventually control our thought processes. Through advertisements, social media, and fake news with a preconceived agenda, they gain influence over our decision-making.
This practice has slowly seeped its way into the Church, producing a group of people with itchy ears. So-called Church leaders are now competing to see who can scratch our ears the best to build a more prominent organization and line their pockets.
4) Strength (ischys)
These are our abilities, talents, gifting, graces, and strengths. It can also mean forcefulness, power, and might.
God places within each of us the gifting, graces, and natural abilities needed to fulfill our purpose on Earth. Only by laying these down at His feet can we fully reach our God-given potential.
We need to ask ourselves some sobering questions.
Are we giving all these aspects 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 using our talents, strengths, and gifts for? Are we giving them to God or using them for selfish reasons? Are we loving God with everything in us, or are we withholding parts of our lives from God and using them to love ourselves and serve our selfish ambitions?
This line of thinking opens a whole new level of judging ourselves. We must be a people of integrity when loving God and giving Him every aspect of our being.
The word of God must become a mirror and a microscope, allowing us to be brutally honest with ourselves and bringing us into an entirely different realm of accountability. Abiding in His word opens up the possibility of 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 in how we are commanded to love God and how we are commanded to love our neighbor? There are four very different and specific aspects to loving God, but there is only one requirement for how to love our neighbor. Why is that?
We are only expected to love our neighbor as we love ourselves. What if we don’t even like ourselves? What if we hate who we are and what we have become? Many people come to Christ in this condition. Self-loathing, hopeless, even suicidal. Not much is expected of these people at first regarding loving others, but they are still expected to love God with all their heart, soul, mind, and strength.
Love comes into our hearts in seed form. As that seed grows, the capacity to love others grows as well. As our love for God grows, the expectations of loving our neighbor also grow. Suppose we love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength. In that case, we won’t have to be concerned about loving our neighbor because that will be the natural response from our loving relationship with the Father. We love people out of the overflow of our love for God.
Loving our neighbor becomes evident by 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 says that the best way to express our 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 entirely. This love is expressed through complete submission to the Lord and His word.
When we love God with our heart, soul, mind, and strength, we bring all four parts of our existence into a perfect harmony of worship that pleases God and becomes the most significant expression of faith attainable by 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 only realized when 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.
JESUS IS COMING!
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