"Love the Lord your God will all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength"
-Deuteronomy 6:5
"Jesus replied: 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind."
-Matthew 22:37
A couple weeks ago our church studied Deuteronomy 6, which contains a popular and well known verse that I have written above. I didn't think much of it at the time, since I actually had to miss that Sunday worship service due to snow (I did get to see the sermon online). The next week (or the week after) I was asked to help the youth group praise team and to teach them about worship. As I was thinking about what I wanted to share, I was reminded of Deuteronomy 6:5. I had listened to a message by Ravi Zacharias a long time ago where he talked about worship, and how it requires all of ourselves to worship God in spirit and truth. I don't remember exactly how he phrased it, but I remember the basic idea. Finally, last Friday I led our college group in discussion about discipleship. As I prepared for that discussion, the topic of love was presented to me in the book we are studying. The book "Multiply" actually used Matthew 22:37, which is when Jesus quotes Deuteronomy 6:5, but replaces "strength" with "mind".
Now that we have discussed the background of how I came to meditate on these verses, I want to share what spoke to me. As I watched the sermon on Deuteronomy 6, the messenger asked an obvious question that anyone would have while reading Deuteronomy 6. "What does it mean to worship God with all your heart, soul, and strength?" He then proceeded to say that it means we worship God with our whole being. I absolutely agree, but I think we can think a little bit more about what is meant by "all your heart and all your soul and all your strength (and all your mind)".
If we think about what human essence consists of, we can consider four things. We are physical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual beings. Our physical essence is easy to understand- it is simply our five senses. Our emotional essence is constituted of our emotions and feelings. Our intellectual essence is our ability to think and reason. Lastly, our spiritual being is the image of God in us, our character and our connection to God. These four things make up who we are as people.
So why talk about this? Think again to Deuteronomy 6:5 and Matthew 22:37. We are to love God with our heart, soul, strength, and mind. Each of these things correspond to a part of our being. Our heart is our emotional being, our soul is our spiritual being, our strength is our physical being, and our mind is our intellectual being. We are meant to love God with each of these parts of ourselves. If we leave any of these parts out, we are not loving God as we are commanded to. It would be a half-hearted love. Love is the highest calling that we have in our lives, so let us love God with every single part of our being.
-Smart
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