We know that we have The Ten Commandments to follow, which is referenced in Exodus 20:3-17 and Deuteronomy 5:7-21. The first four teaches us what we should do to love God, and the last six teaches us what we should do to love others. But Jesus altered the two themes into two separate Commandments; the two greatest commandments. First, you should "Love the Lord your God..." And second, you should "Love you neighbor as yourself." Now, I have been asked: "Was Jesus saying that 'love for God'is the greatest commandment while ''love for neighbor'is second in importance? Or was he saying that both 'love of God' and 'love of neighbor'are equally important and rank as the greatest commandments?" Well, we will get into that in the next segment of my Duology. For the time being, just know that they are both important and we will be concentrating on the "Love the Lord your God" part first.
Exodus 20:3-8 and Deuteronomy 5:7-12 states the first four Commandments. And as mentioned, the first four Commandments teaches us what we should do to love God. Now, we know the "who," "what," "when," and "where" when it comes to loving God. Who should love the Lord? Everybody. What should we do to love the Lord? Worship only God, do not worship idols, do not use His name in vain, and keep the Sabbath Day holy. When should you love the Lord? All day and every day. Where should you love the Lord? Everywhere. So, in this article, we will be looking into the "how" when it comes to loving the Lord. In other words, we will be eliciting illustrations to "How you should love the Lord your God," or "In what way you should love the Lord your God."
Deuteronomy 6:5 says to: "Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength." Matthew 22:37 says to: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind." Now, even though Mark 12:30 and Luke 10:27 have the words: "mind" and "strength" in a different order, they say: "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength." (The Gospel Luke has "strength" before "mind"). But no matter what Gospel you read or how you slice it, there are two things that are certain. (1.) Your "heart" and "soul" are definitely the first two (and all verses have them in the same order). And (2.) In addition to your "heart" and "soul," you should love Him with all your "mind" and "strength," regardless of their order. So, let's examine these attributes to give us a better understanding of how you should love the Lord your God.
Heart - Emotional constitution, basic disposition, or character.
Soul - The spiritual or immaterial part of a human being, regarded as immortal. It's a person's moral or emotional nature or sense of identity.
Mind - The element of a person that enables them to be aware of the world and their experiences, to think, and to feel (i.e. it is manifested especially in thought, perception, emotion, will, memory, attention, and imagination).
Strength - The power to resist strain or stress and the ability to maintain a moral or intellectual position firmly in order to have the capacity or potential for effective action.
Keep in mind that these are the literal and primary meanings of those word, in contrast to the feelings or ideas that the word suggests. These set of meanings are explicit, specific and direct. Now, let's proceed to the next step and look at each of these qualities and see how they are related to the way you love the Lord your God.
First, you should love the Lord your God "with all your heart." So, you should love Him through your emotions, your mood, and your inherent personality. By loving the Lord your God with all of your heart, you're not expressing a deep passion or fondness due to cogent reasoning conducted or assessed according to strict principles of validity. That would imply that we could love God through a codification of the system of proof and inference. And when it comes to the Lord your God (especially when referring to the heart), that is simply not the case. Saying or writing something such as "I know in my heart that God exists." is a common misconception. There's a quote from Blaise Pascal that states that: "The heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of." There are many ways you could interpret that saying. One thing is for certain, however. The heart defies reason. The cosmological, ontological, and teleological argument cannot necessarily be proven by logic or nature. We cannot draw conclusions about God's existence or power, His love for us or our love for Him based on facts or premises. It is a subjective experience that is unique to the individual. It is all based on faith. How do we define faith? Well, the denotation of is: complete trust in someone or something based on spiritual apprehension rather than proof. If we were to look at it Biblically, faith is: "the substance in things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen" -- Hebrews 11:1. So, faith means agreeing with, believing in, and trusting something that you can't know or comprehend on your own without hard evidence. Having faith means being able to live with unanswered questions. And although that may sound more difficult than it actually is, faith gives you the courage to endure and survive without having the answers. 1 Corinthian 13:13 states: "And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love." 1 Corinthians 13:7-8, in accordance with love, states that: "It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails." So, instead of providing a set of answers to painful and complicated enigmas, faith (as well as hope and love) provides the means to persevere. Therefore, the correct verb when it comes to faith is not "knowing" but "believing." Knowing and believing are two different things. We KNOW facts. Facts are things that is actually the case or has really occurred. Facts are things that we "know" to be true through verifiability. I know for a fact that I am a man. If you were to look at the philosophical, legal, historical and scientific evidence that describes the categories and details of what a man is, I would fall in to all of the criteria. In addition, I also know that I am a man by looking in the mirror. Except for the refection being flipped in the opposite direction, the mirror doesn't lie. There is a man in the mirror. I can SEE it. I know that is actually the case for me. I know for a fact that I graduated from college and received two bachelor degrees. I was there. I lived that particular time in my life and can recollect it anytime I wish. So, I know that it has actually occurred. A belief, however, is: the confidence or acceptance that something is true or real, or that something exists. You have no real proof that it is actually the case or that it has actually occurred. You don't have to know it to be true through verifiability. You simply accept it as true without having any evidence to back it up or without ever actually seeing it. So, you don't say: "I KNOW in my heart that God exists" because the heart doesn't KNOW anything. There is no irrefutable proof that He exists. The heart senses what cannot be seen and thereby makes its decisions on what it feels (and thus believes) and not on what the eyes see and can be physically proven. So, the correct statement is: "I BELIEVE in my heart that God exists." As I've pointed out before, Christians are not known as "knowers" or "seers," we are known as "Believers." We don't have proof that God exists, we have faith that God exists. As 2 Corinthians 5:7 says, "We walk by faith, not by sight."
Next, you should love the Lord your God "with all your soul." So, you should love Him through the part of you that is invisible, inaudible, intangible and imperishable. You can't see it, you can't hear it, you can't touch it, but it will never die. It will endure forever. The soul is known for being a perfect-formed and immaterial entity separate from the physical body (in most cases, a disembodied spirit at death). Before death, the soul occupies the physical body, being a partial variable that sustains life. Once death occurs, the soul is released from the physical body and will be susceptible to eternal misery or happiness. When we reach that state of being, our abilities will be (what is theorized as) infinite. We will not have any physical bodies weighing us down; bodies we have to feed, hydrate, wash, exercise, slumber, and maintain health. And as the First Law of Thermodynamics indicates: "Energy is conserved; it can be neither created nor destroyed, only transformed." Although the soul will be perpetually detached from the physical body, the soul will also be liberated from it. We will undergo a thorough metamorphosis into another form of energy. In fact, it is proposed that we will be "Pure Energy." Some say that there is no such thing as pure energy because there is no degrees of quality or intensity to energy (an indirectly observed quantity of the ability or a potential physical system has to do work on other physical systems, thus creating power, over time); that energy is energy, period. Many Quantum Physicists say that when a particle called: matter and an opposite-charged particle called: antimatter annihilate one another, it forms what we know of as: "Pure Energy." However, others say that the definition of pure energy is some kind of mystical substance that only has momentum (motion, the impetus gained by a moving object that is changeable) and no matter (mass, ordinary material particles that do not change through the transformation process). In a sense, that is what we will be once our soul is forever released from the physical body. It is speculated that we will have the ability to perform paranormal phenomena such as telepathy (the transmission of information from one person to another without using any of our known sensory channels or physical interaction), psychokinesis (distorting or moving an object with mental power), clairvoyance (the ability to gain information about an object, person, location or physical and remote event through means other than the known human senses), and precognition (acquisition or effect of future information that cannot be deduced from presently available and normally acquired sense-based information or laws of physics and/or nature). Whatever our capabilities would or will be, they will be without end; they will be countless and immeasurable. And not only will our capabilities be interminable, but so will our love for the Lord. It will be an ineffable elegance without any extraneous and unnecessary elements; totally free from the adulterated abhorrence and malevolence of society. Fortunately, the soul is not confined to this only after death. If the soul could be tainted while in the world, its contamination would continue forever. The strength and vitality of the soul is immutable and impervious. In Matthew 26:41 and Mark 14:38, Jesus mentions how: "the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak." So, for much as one wishes to achieve something, the frailties of the human body often make it impossible. However, the aptitude of the soul is and always will be limitless; never restricted in terms of number, quantity, or extent. To love the Lord your God with all your soul is to love Him with the part of you that is indestructible and inconsumable. In essence, it will be your soul that will be with God for eternity, not your body. Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5:6: "Therefore we are always confident and know that as long as we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord," thus, Paul says conclusively in 2 Corinthians 5:8 that: "We are confident, I say, and would prefer to be away from the body and at home with the Lord." So, not only does absence from the body mean presence with the Lord, but are we considered to be "at home" with the Lord when we are permanently ""away from the body." But near or far from the Lord, He should be loved with the part of each person that is impenetrable and perdurable. So, now that you know that you should love Him with that part of you that is perennial and irrefrangible, the important question is HOW do you love the Lord your God with it? Well, actually there are a few ways. One way is to make Godly choices and pursue obedience to God's word. Leviticus 22:31 says: "Keep my commands and follow them. I am the LORD." Solomon said in Proverbs 3:1: "My son, do not forget my teaching, but keep my commands in your heart." Jesus said in John 4:15 that: "If you love me, keep my commands." He went on to say in John 14:21 that: "Whoever has my commands and keeps them is the one who loves me. The one who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love them and show myself to them.” Then, in John 15:10, Jesus said that: "If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commands and remain in his love." So, like conveying love to other human beings, your love to the Lord your God must be demonstrated. We demonstrate our love to God by obeying every Word that proceeds from His mouth. And if love is demonstrated, like with most human beings, it will be reciprocated. However, unlike human beings, God's love for us is unconditional. Therefore, our love for God should be unconditional as well. Another way is to live a life of humility in attitudes and speech. By reading Philippians 2:1-17, you can obtain a good idea on how to be "humble." Humility is defined as: "A quality by which a person considering his own defects has a humble opinion of himself and willingly submits himself to God and to others for God's sake." So, expressing humility is comprised of three basic qualities. First, you submit to God and legitimate authority. Second, you recognize virtues and talents that others possess, particularly those that surpass your own, and give due honor and, when required, obedience. And third, you recognize the limits of your talents, ability, or authority; and, not reach for what is beyond your grasp. Humility is a virtue that few people possess. The two main characteristics of humility is: modesty (unassuming or moderate in the estimation of one's abilities) and meekness (yielding to the will of another person or a superior force). So, we should not only be submissive to the Lord, but we should also humble ourselves before Him. The Apostle James said in James 1:10: "Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up." In the same way, if you glorify yourself and show pride before the Lord, you will be decisively defeated. The Prophet Isaiah said in Isaiah 2:12 that: "The LORD Almighty has a day in store for all the proud and lofty, for all that is exalted (and they will be humbled)." So, it is made pretty clear that we will go from one extreme to the other, depending on which side of the pendulum we want to be on. Jesus said in Matthew 23:12 and Luke 14:11 & 18:14 that: "For (all) those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted." With everything considered, you love the Lord your God with all your soul (the part of you that will never die) by loving others and Him here on Earth as if you were already "at home with the Lord." The Apostle Paul said in Ephesians 4:2: "Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love." Peter said in 1 Peter 3:8: "Finally, all of you, be like-minded, be sympathetic, love one another, be compassionate and humble."
Then, you should love the Lord your God "with all your mind." So, you should love Him through a series of thoughts and actions that have the capacity to have an effect on your character, development, or behavior. The concept of "mind" is understood in many different ways by many different traditions (i.e. philosophy, science, history, religious perspective). Christianity has tended to see the mind as recognizably different in nature from the soul; something that exists on a plane other than the physical. Ultimately, one of the key attributes of the mind in many senses is that it is a private sphere to which no one but the owner has access. No one else can "know our mind." They can only interpret what we consciously or unconsciously communicate. However, if you believed in a "higher power other than yourself," there would be one inconsistency with that notion. Although it is true for humans here on Earth, there is one perfect, omnipotent and (pertaining to this discrepancy) omniscient cosmic force and/or superior being that can and does "know our mind." And that all-pervading authority is God; the Lord your God. He knows and remembers every thought we have here on Earth. Ecclesiastes 12:14 states that: "For God will bring every deed into judgment, including every hidden thing, whether it is good or evil." This includes what we do in front of people, what we do in secret; clear down to what we think. Whatever it is, we will be held accountable for it. Now, nobody on here on Earth is perfect and not every single thought will be good, since we are sinful by nature. And, of course, there many situations that would be in everybody's best interest if we were to keep our thoughts to ourselves and forever hold our peace. But when we speak of loving the Lord your God with all of your mind, we emphasize not the intrinsic but the extrinsic. It's not just how the environment reacts to our actions but how we react to the actions of the environment. But even though God knows every thought we have, any true Christian will never claim to be God's mind-reader. With that being the case, how can we really know what God expects from us? He doesn't talk to us like He did with the Prophets, Judges, and Kings in the Old Testament, right? We weren't the physical followers of Jesus or His apostles in the New Testament, right? What do we have access to today that would give us an idea of what God expects from us? Well, we may not have lived the Old or New Testament, but we do have the sixty-six Books that make up the Old and New Testament. And that collection of sixty-six Books that make up the Old and New Testaments is what we know of today as the Holy Bible. What makes this collection of Books so significant to loving the Lord your God with all your mind? Well, 2 Timothy 3:16 states that: "All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work". So, what better way to learn God's instructions than to read the historical accounts of what He expected from His servants in the past and what He expects from His servants today in the Holy Bible? Now, when we read the Holy Bible, you are doing two things. First, you are committing those sacred writings to memory. But moreover, you are also taking it a step further and letting those memorized Scriptures become the collective conscious and unconscious processes within you that direct and influence your mental and physical behavior. In other words, you not only devote your time and attention to learning the aspects of this inviolable Book with the intention of recalling them at a later time, but also to apply that acquired knowledge to your everyday living and allow it to effect your persona; you let impact the way you think and act. Matthew 5:16 states: "In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven." Now, let there be no misunderstandings. This means a lot more than just being a munificent do-gooder devoted to the promotion of ecological and human welfare. Being a kind-hearted humanitarian would be one less thing you'd have to work on, but it is not the way to honor the Lord your God. And it is definitely not the way to get "saved." That would imply that we can get into God's presence by "works." And as Ephesians 2:7-9 clearly conveys: you cannot be saved by works, only by grace. No, what Matthew 5:16: explains is two things. First, by letting the way you live your life (whether through conversation, actions, or faithful instructions) be seen and known everywhere, you are in all situations (whether in prosperity and adversity) showing that you are sincere and faithful in what you believe. And moreover, it should be in a way that you are letting the Lord your God be glorified by it, not you. So, by letting the knowledge and understanding of God's Word influence the way you live your life and allowing it to be manifested before others as an example, you are regarding the Lord your God with great respect. God is said to be glorified when we as Children of God, Galatians 3:26, endeavor to recommend the salvation of God to others, they may be prevailed to follow God as well when they see they way we live our lives. I believe Albert Barnes said well when he stated that: "good actions will be seen, and will lead people to honor God. If we have no other way of doing good - if we are poor, and unlearned, and unknown yet we may do good by our lives. No sincere and humble Christian lives in vain. The feeblest light at midnight is of use."
Finally, you should love the Lord your God "with all your strength." So, you should love Him through your physical and emotional capacity for exertion or endurance and regard Him as embodying or affording force or firmness. This means two things. (1.) Just like He wants you to do, you should rely on Him for everything. And (2.) By relying on Him for everything, we acquire and build our energy and intestinal fortitude through Him. Many Scriptures refer to trusting the Lord. Psalm 118:8 says: "It is better to take refuge in the LORD than to trust in humans." Proverbs 3:5 says: "Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding." Isaiah 26:4 says: "Trust in the LORD forever, for the LORD, the LORD himself, is the Rock eternal." Jeremiah 17:7 says: "But blessed is the one who trusts in the LORD, whose confidence is in him." Nahum 1:7 says: "The LORD is good, a refuge in times of trouble. He cares for those who trust in him." And these are just a few examples from the Old Testament. But I'm sure you get the point. However, like many things, trusting in the Lord your God completely is easier said than done. So often, our times of hardship seem to be so long and drawn out, we sometimes wonder if God is really guiding us. We may even feel that we have to take the initiative and take control of our own problems. But there's another to look at it. When you put complete trust in the Lord your God, it is one way of loving Him with all your strength. Yes, you're surrendering yourself to Him. But showing Him that you completely trust Him is one way you're expressing your love to Him. When another human being never gives you their trust, you are not only unable to help them when they need someone to lean on, you certainly do not feel loved by that person, either. On the other hand, if you were to love the Lord your God with all of your strength, one of the things you're doing is giving Him the "elbow-room, so to speak" to guide you and by submitting to Him, "he will make your paths straight" as Proverbs 3:6 puts it. Unlike God, man is imperfect. No one can make it in this life on their own. We are designed by God to need each other, as well as need God. Unfortunately, many people (even some who profess themselves as Christians) confuse meekness with weakness. You're not an inmate in a maximum security prison where you have to go by the Darwinistic notions of "survival of the fittest." When you are referred to as "weak," take heart! What you really are is a person who has God's strength backing him/her up. If you can master that, then you can go a step further and say that the Lord your God IS your strength. Exodus 15:2 says: "The LORD is my strength and my defense; he has become my salvation. He is my God, and I will praise him, my father's God, and I will exalt him." Psalm 118:14 says: "The LORD is my strength and my defense; he has become my salvation." Isaiah 12:2 says: "Surely God is my salvation; I will trust and not be afraid. The LORD, the LORD himself, is my strength and my defense; he has become my salvation." So, along with being the one who "saves" you and the one who "defends" you, He can be glorified by being the one who strengthens you. Loving the Lord your God with all your strength allows the Lord your God to BE your strength, and thus, gives you strength. Philippians 4:13 says: "I can do all this through him who gives me strength." (whether you are referring to God or Christ).
So, we know the "who," "what" "when," "where," when it comes to loving the Lord your God. After this article, we have a pretty good idea about the "how" part. I guess one final question remains, which is the "why" part. That is, WHY should you love the Lord your God? Well, that would not only require a trilogy, but it would also result in an a prose with multiple and conglomerate viewpoints that would be utterly time-consuming and quite lengthy. Oh, there are many reasons of why you should love the Lord your God, whether "love" is a relative or absolute tern in your opinion. Nevertheless, love the Lord. Love the Lord your God. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength. Love Him incessantly. Love Him profoundly. Love Him with a great deal of effort. Love Him in every way and any way you can. But all in all, love Him.
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