How Do You Love God with Your Whole Being?

Last time I mentioned that our only proper response to God’s extravagant love demonstrated by the GREATEST GIFT in JESUS was to obey the greatest commandment: to love the LORD our God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength (Mark 12:30).

As my Christmas present to Him this year, I am recommitting to love God with my entire being. But…

How Do You Love God with Your Whole Being?!

In and of ourselves, this is impossible! However, if we are children of God, we will want to because God Himself plants this desire in the hearts of His children.

If you read the book of Jeremiah, 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 (Jer 32:41) is that…

God loves us with His whole heart and soul!

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, we 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 and shout like King David:

My whole being will exclaim, “Who is like you, O Lord? (Ps 35:10)

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 (See Ps 37:4).  

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. Meanwhile will you join me and commit to loving God with your everything?

Relevant Resources:
Our Knowable God: Learning How to Relate to Our Invisible Lord
On My Father’s Lap: Drawing Near to Your Father in Heaven