Living in the In-Between - Devotion 2

Love God - Heart 

“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment.” Matthew 22:37-38 

When I think of the heart, my mind thinks of different things. Since I am a girl dad, it goes to all of the outfits that had hearts all over them when they were little. It was hearts on bears, toys, movies, and walls. It was hearts everywhere! I also think of Valentine’s Day. Coming to your local stores very soon (if not already) will be an entire aisle decorated in red with hearts to get you to buy things that will let your significant other know how much you love them. In our world today, the heart is the symbol of love. 

The heart is a very important organ in the body as well. Every living and breathing thing that is on the face of the earth (for the most part) has a heart of some sort. The heart is the engine of our very lives. The heart pumps blood to the lungs, where it picks up oxygen. Then it sucks it back into the heart to pump that oxygenated blood out to the rest of the body to keep it alive. A normal human heart beats about 100,000 times per day. That equals out to around 35 million times a year and around 2.5 billion times in a normal lifespan. Without your heart, you cannot live. The heart is the central organ of the body. 

God’s Word looks at the heart in the same way. The heart is the central part of your being. It is integral, necessary, and signifies life. Jesus gives the Greatest Commandment, which restates the Shema in the Old Testament (Deuteronomy 6:4-5). God lists three things we are to love Him with all of them, and He begins with the heart. How do we love God with all of our heart? 

Loving God with all of your anything is a learning process. It takes time and it even takes effort. Just the concept of loving is action. It is not simply lovey-dovey feelings that you have. It is a decision, a daily decision, to place your affection on someone. Yes, there are times of intense emotion, but love is a verb (thank you, DC Talk, for that reminder from the early 90’s Christian music scene) and love is a choice.  

Loving God with all of your heart is to love Him at the core of your being. It involves placing all of you in His hands and making the daily choice to have God at the center of your life. This is done by spending time in God’s Word, praying, and even being silent to rest in God. This means that you pray to God for every decision you make. It is loving God with all of your emotions. I realize that this may be difficult for some as religion can easily become cerebral rather than a relationship.  

When you come to Jesus and give Him your life, you enter into a relationship with the living God, the Creator of the universe and the Lover of your soul. Think about this: God loves you passionately! The Bible tells us that continually. Jesus has shown you that in the fact that He came to earth, died for you, and rose from the dead to defeat death. What does that say about His heart for you? 

Loving God with all of your heart is giving Him everything you have. It is saying yes to Him at every turn. It is surrender. It is truly loving Him first. Here is the thing, though, you do not do it naturally. 

“And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.” Ezekiel 36:26-27 

God speaks to His people through the prophet Ezekiel to tell them that a day would come when He would take out their hearts of stone and replace them with a heart of flesh. His Spirit would make His home in them, and they would follow Him out of the strength of the Spirit.  

What you need today is not to try harder to love God with your heart. You need a completely different heart. You need a heart transplant. You need God’s heart.  

One of my favorite verses in all of God’s Word is John 3:30 (NIV), “He must become greater, I must become less.” That is our prayer. The goal is that God would become greater in our hearts and that we would become less. It is the way that we love God with all of our heart.