The First and Greatest Commandment
Have you ever wondered what's the first and greatest commandment? No, it's not about being the best in memorizing verses or being kind towards other people or something we define on our own as what we think pleases God. It's not even about being always present in church activities. It's the greatest and yet I sometimes take it for granted. If you haven't noticed, I shifted to a first person point of view because this is something I want to evaluate myself with first and foremost.
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 NIV)
To love the Lord my God with all my heart, soul, mind, and strength. That's the first and greatest commandment. Love is the basis of my personal relationship with the Lord (and yours too of course). In fact, the Bible clearly states that loving the Lord means obeying His commands.
The reason I'm writing this piece is that I want to make it clear to myself and I hope you'll get something out of it too. What does it mean to love with all my heart, soul, mind, and strength?
Heart
While biologists may frown upon the use of the heart as the symbol of emotions and love, it's not just as cheesy if not the heart.
Loving the Lord with all my heart means that I am consumed with the desire to please Him. I used to think that spiritual maturity means writing off emotions. However, I quickly saw that God Himself is characterized by a lot of powerful emotions including love, peacefulness, wrath, joy, and so much more. Emotions are powerful and aligning them towards what is good and pleasing for the Lord can allow me to experience wonderful things. What better focus than to love the Lord with all my heart, that I am consumed with my desire to please Him?
Soul
The soul is the consolidation of everything that makes a person. This includes personality, experiences, reason, thinking, etc. This is basically the inner being of a person. It is every exciting to imagine that loving God with all my soul means my whole being is focused on expressing that. The truth is, this should be natural as this is God's design for me from the start.
Mind
When it comes to analysis, decision-making, and logic, the mind comes to mind (got that?).
What does it mean to love the Lord with all my mind? I haven't been trying to solve mathematical equations for a long time already but those things tend to leave a mark. Anyway, when trying to solve an equation, a very important factor is the given. It practically influences the approach to be taken leading towards a solution. With this analogy, I saw that the involvement of God in my life is a given. Whenever, I make a decision, it is driven by the Lord. My priorities? Influenced by the Lord.
Hence, loving the Lord with all my mind means my priorities and decision-making are both influenced heavily by my desire to please God.
Strength
I think loving the Lord with all my strength is what brings together all these things. It means that all my actions and all my efforts are concentrated on my sole objective in life–to please God. Whatever fills my heart, mind, and soul reflects on my actions.
By this time, I hope you have already noticed two recurring themes. Loving the Lord means we are bent on pleasing him and loving the Lord means our actions reflect that desire.
In fact, this is love for God: to keep his commands. And his commands are not burdensome. (1 John 5:3 NIV)
Let me repeat. To love God is to obey Him and that shouldn't be a burden for me. How can it be when my heart, soul, mind, and strength work together with the most important focus that I can ever have– to please God.