Loving God with my whole soul

Matthew 22:37-39 “Jesus replied Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all our mind This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself”.

I started this series of posts earlier this week and I dealt with loving God with your whole heart and your whole mind.  I started with those two because they were easier for me to write about. 

When I look at the Old Testament I see that sometimes “heart” and “soul” are used interchangeably.  However, here they are separated and so that tells me that God is trying to make a different point.

I think heart, soul, and spirit are hard to define.  All are talking about what is happening on the inside of a person.  I think loving God with your soul has something to do with the inner part of our life. It has to do with loving God with who we are - the very core of us. So, not only are we to place God first in our heart – but we are to love Him with all of our inner being.

If something is messed up in my soul, my whole life is messed up. If I have bitterness or unforgiveness in my soul, it saturates everything in my life. And so loving God with all of my soul means to love Him with my entire inner being. That means real love: not fake love, not “religious actions”, and not anything externally. 

This means everything my inner life experiences - everything I feel, decide, believe, think, choose, want, dwell on, turn to, and pursue – is about my soul. The soul is about what makes me happy, what fills me with joy, where my sorrow and sadness is, and what gives me peace.  God wants a kind of love that “saturates” and “permeates” every part of me.

What comes from loving God with all my heart, mind, and soul?

1. I make godly choices.  My choices show who I am committed to and they reflect my core values. My choices define me and show my lifestyle to the world.  Choices flow from what I treasure the most.  As I treasure my relationship with God, my choices will demonstrate that I love God.

2. I obey His Word.  When I keep his commands and live by His Word, I am expressing my love for God. There will be times I don’t feel like it but that is when I obey out of love. 

3. Live a life of humility.  Jesus was the ultimate example of this.  Meekness should be expressed in our attitudes and speech.  What we say and how we say it enhances or quenches our testimony.  The choice is ours.

Matthew 12:34 “ For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.”  

Proverbs 18:21 “The tongue has the power of life and death, and those who love it will eat its fruit.”

As I choose to love God with all my heart, mind, and spirit, I will be living a life that is in direct opposition to what the world teaches.  It won’t be easy but Jesus didn’t promise us an easy life; he did promise us eternal life.