I’ve studied, thought deeply and written frequently about what it means to love God with all of our being. And I am constantly amazed at the new insights the Lord gives me. Mark 12:30 tells us the greatest commandment is to love the LORD your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. But…
How Can We Love God with All of Our Being?!
In and of ourselves it is impossible! However, if you are a child of God, you want to because God Himself plants this desire in the hearts of His children.
Currently I’m rereading through the book of Jeremiah. If you know the story, God’s chosen people were constantly rebelling and putting other gods before their Deliverer. It’s heart-wrenching to read!
But they, like all people, had a sinful nature and kept choosing to go their own way. So what did God do? He promised a new covenant with His people so that they wouldn’t stray, so that they could love Him with all of their being.
“But this is the new covenant I will make with the people of Israel after those days,” says the Lord. “I will put my instructions deep within them, and I will write them on their hearts….” (Jer 31:33 NLT)
“They will be my people, and I will be their God. I will give them singleness of heart and action, so that they will always fear me for their own good and the good of their children after them. I will make an everlasting covenant with them: I will never stop doing good to them, and I will inspire them to fear me, so that they will never turn away from me. I will rejoice in doing them good and will assuredly plant them in this land with all my heart and soul.” (Jer 32:38-41, emphasis added)
This new covenant was fulfilled by Christ at the cross. When we accept Jesus Christ as our Savior, we acquire the capability to reciprocate His love. We can love God because He first loved us (1 Jn 4:19).
What struck me in the passage above is that God loves us with His whole heart and soul (Jer 32:41). I take that to mean He loves me with His whole being!
No wonder His love is unfathomable. When God commands us to love Him with all of who we are, He is not asking us to do something He hasn’t already done.
This is mind-boggling!!!
To be loved with just a smidgen of His Personhood would be way way more than you and I need—or deserve!
Surely you and I cannot love God to the same degree. Next to our infinite, transcendent God, we are small, finite, and severely lacking. However, we can love Him back in the same manner, with the same kind of love.
God chooses to love us with an agape type of love—one that is sacrificial, selfless, and unconditional. And He deserves to be loved in return in the same way.
I want to love God like this—with the totality of my being! I hope you do too.
Even though we drastically fall short, He accepts what you and I can give at this point in our relationship with Him. He sees the longing in our hearts to reciprocate this type of love and will help us achieve the desire of our hearts.
God understands our inability to love Him perfectly here on earth. But as time goes on and we put out the effort, He somehow—supernaturally and progressively—empowers us to love Him with our all. Then one day when we’re finally in our heavenly home, we’ll be able to love Him completely in the way He truly deserves and wants.
For in him we live and move and have our being. (Acts 17:28)
Next time, my friends, we’ll begin to cover what it means to love God with our whole being, that is, what it looks like in our everyday life.
Relevant resources:
EXTRAVAGANT Love
Our Knowable God: Learning How to Relate to Our Invisible Lord
On My Father’s Lap: Drawing Near to Your Father in Heaven
Except where indicated all Scripture quotations are taken from The Holy Bible: New International Version®. NIV. ® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan Publishing House. All rights reserved.
(NLT) Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.