Em-pulse

When asked what the greatest commandment was, Jesus replied that it is to “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.” (Mark 12:30).  I woke up this morning thinking about this verse.  I was thinking how in order to have a full life in Jesus, we really do need to love with him with each and every part of us.  If we don’t, we become unbalanced.  Think about it.  We see people like this all the time.  We see the emotionally driven people, the people that think with their hearts so to speak.  They go around basing decisions on how they feel for the moment without any regard to practicality or using wisdom.  They, many times, get themselves into bad situations because of this, or continuously get hurt by people or relationships or circumstances.  Then, you have those who do everything in their life based off of their brain power and intelligence.  These people go through life without any regard to emotions, feelings (theirs or others), and many times they hurt others in the process.  They are “smart”, they forget about compassion, mercy or grace, such as the relgious leaders of Jesus’ day.  Then you have those people who only focus on their soul or, ”inner self”, type of living.  These people focus on how THEY can achieve inner peace or reach the next level of meditation.  It is all about them, with no regard for others eternal state.  Then, of course, you have people who soley rely on their own strength in life for everything.  They don’t need help, they don’t need love, they don’t need others support.  They can do everything on their own.  Each one of these ways to live is not the biblical way!  Each of these types are relying on themselves in some way to achieve something in life.  But see, we cannot acheive anything on our own.  God loves everyone and desires that each of us have life in abundance!  But, in order to have the full life the Lord is talking about here, it is absolutely necessary to follow this greatest commandment.  We must love the Lord with EVERY part of us.  We cannot say, you know God, I think I will love you with my heart today, but I am smart enough to figure this one out on my own, I don’t really need you; or God, you can have my mind, but I really FEEL it’s ok to do this, just this once.  Living this way only deceives ourselves and in the end, will make us miserable.  When we love the Lord with ALL of us, our heart, mind, soul AND strength, our lives will be in proper focus, because they will be focused on HIM!  When we do this, all other things will come together and fall into place.  How wonderful that is to have a God we can love, trust and put complete faith in!  We don’t need to try and do anything on our own, in fact we can’t!  But God loves us so much, He wants to help us, He wants us to give everything to Him and let Him handle it!  When we love our God with everything we have, our lives will be far more abundant in measure than we could even imagined them to be on our own! 

I am not sure why I woke up thinking about that verse this morning.  But God really spoke to me with this one.  Even as Andrew and I begin moving toward ministry, there are times where I become worrisome or afraid, and I begin to take back bits and pieces of me from God.  He reminded me this morning that all I need to do is Love him with EVERYTHING that I have, follow his Word and His commands and He will take care of the rest!  End of story!  I have NOTHING to worry about, nothing to fear, nothing to be frustrated about. . .because God WILL reveal His plan for us in His timing.  In the mean time, all we must do is to love Him with all we are!  Because when we love someone, we trust them, have faith in them, obey them, listen to them, follow them. . .you get my point.  Loving God with all we are encompasses SO many things.  If I am loving God with all I am, I have NO room for any of that other junk!  Are you loving God with all you are today?  Take a chance on God, He won’t let you down, not ever!  God Bless!