Jesus said that the greatest commandment was, "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind." What does that look like?
It means that our love for God should be preeminent. That is, our love for everything and everyone must be less than and because of God. Every desire and love must be inferior to and included in our love for God.
It also means that our love for God should be fervent. When Jesus says, "love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul...", the love he is calling for involves passion and emotion.
If you go to Amazon.com and type in "Passion for..." you will find hundreds of books with those words in the title. You will see that there are books called: A Passion for- fishing, cooking, mushrooms, knitting, chocolate... You will even find a book called "A Passion for Steam". I don't understand how or why a person could be passionate about steam, but there is a book about it.
In America you can be passionate about everything except one thing- your relationship with God. I could go to a political rally, a football game or rock concert and scream until I am hoarse. If my team loses and I cry, people think I am a big fan. If my team wins and I wave my hands in the air and jump around, that is acceptable. But, if I do anything like these things in church people say that I am a fanatic, a nut-job. One pastor said he had seen the same people scream like a wild Indian at a game and then sit like a wooden Indian in a church.
I am not promoting a shallow emotionalism. I plan to write about that in my next blog and talk about the fact that Jesus said, "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind."
What is my spiritual temperature? It seems to me that one reason that the gospel is not spreading very fast is because many who are called Christians are not contagious. And one of the characteristics of someone who is contagious is that they have a fever.
Thursday, February 5, 2009
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
The Greatest Commandment- Part 3
What does it mean to love the Lord with all your heart, all your soul and all your mind?
It means that our love for God should be preeminent. That is, we should love everything less than and because of God.
Jesus said that unless we hate our father, mother, sisters, brothers, husband, wife and our own life that we can't be his disciple. This means that our love for him must come first and be greater than our love for those we love the most.
Jesus also said "You can't serve God and Money". The reason this is so is that both are inevitably dominating loves. Either our love for God will dominate and our love for money will dissappear, or the opposite will happen. Money can become an idol. That is why Paul said that 'greed is idolatry'. John also says, "Love not the world...if any man loves the world the love of the Father is not in him."
We must love family, money-- everything less than God.
We must also love everything and everyone because of God. What does this mean? I love chocolate. I love my wife. (those are from lesser to greater loves) If I am to love God will all my heart, soul and mind, I don't have any part of my heart, soul or mind to use to love anything else, right? No. The Bible tells me to love my wife as Christ loved the church. Also, Jesus says right after this commandment that I should love my neighbor. So how do I love God with all my heart, soul, and mind and love anyone or anything else? I love them because of God. This is why Jesus says that the commandment to love my neighbor is similar to and connected to this commandment to love God with all my heart, soul and mind.
It means, I think, that every love I have should be a component of my love for God. I love chocolate. How can eating chocolate or drinking a Berry-Berry Smoothie be connected to my love for God? Paul said, "Whether you eat or drink, do it all to the glory of God" He said elsewhere when addressing those who thought they were spiritual because they abstained from meat and marrige that everything was created by God to be received with gratefulness and that God gave us all things richly to enjoy. That means that steak and marriage are to be enjoyed as gifts from God. They should be triggers not only to gratitude but also to adoration.
C.S. Lewis said, “Pleasures are shafts of glory as they strike our sensibility….I have tried…to make every pleasure into a channel of adoration. I don’t mean simply by giving thanks for it. One must of course give thanks, but I meant something different…Gratitude exclaims, very properly, ‘How good of God to give me this.’ Adoration says, ‘What must be the quality of that Being whose far-off and momentary coruscations (sparkling and shining displays of brilliance) are like this!’ One’s mind runs back up the sunbeam to the sun….If this is Hedonism, it is also a somewhat arduous discipline. But it is worth some labour.”
Loving God includes the discipline of delighting in God through all that is desirable and good.
It means that our love for God should be preeminent. That is, we should love everything less than and because of God.
Jesus said that unless we hate our father, mother, sisters, brothers, husband, wife and our own life that we can't be his disciple. This means that our love for him must come first and be greater than our love for those we love the most.
Jesus also said "You can't serve God and Money". The reason this is so is that both are inevitably dominating loves. Either our love for God will dominate and our love for money will dissappear, or the opposite will happen. Money can become an idol. That is why Paul said that 'greed is idolatry'. John also says, "Love not the world...if any man loves the world the love of the Father is not in him."
We must love family, money-- everything less than God.
We must also love everything and everyone because of God. What does this mean? I love chocolate. I love my wife. (those are from lesser to greater loves) If I am to love God will all my heart, soul and mind, I don't have any part of my heart, soul or mind to use to love anything else, right? No. The Bible tells me to love my wife as Christ loved the church. Also, Jesus says right after this commandment that I should love my neighbor. So how do I love God with all my heart, soul, and mind and love anyone or anything else? I love them because of God. This is why Jesus says that the commandment to love my neighbor is similar to and connected to this commandment to love God with all my heart, soul and mind.
It means, I think, that every love I have should be a component of my love for God. I love chocolate. How can eating chocolate or drinking a Berry-Berry Smoothie be connected to my love for God? Paul said, "Whether you eat or drink, do it all to the glory of God" He said elsewhere when addressing those who thought they were spiritual because they abstained from meat and marrige that everything was created by God to be received with gratefulness and that God gave us all things richly to enjoy. That means that steak and marriage are to be enjoyed as gifts from God. They should be triggers not only to gratitude but also to adoration.
C.S. Lewis said, “Pleasures are shafts of glory as they strike our sensibility….I have tried…to make every pleasure into a channel of adoration. I don’t mean simply by giving thanks for it. One must of course give thanks, but I meant something different…Gratitude exclaims, very properly, ‘How good of God to give me this.’ Adoration says, ‘What must be the quality of that Being whose far-off and momentary coruscations (sparkling and shining displays of brilliance) are like this!’ One’s mind runs back up the sunbeam to the sun….If this is Hedonism, it is also a somewhat arduous discipline. But it is worth some labour.”
Loving God includes the discipline of delighting in God through all that is desirable and good.
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