Love God Completely

Do You Really Love God?

Mark 12: 28-34

Love God with ALL Your SOUL

The Soul is beyond the heart, it is beyond emotions, it is beyond our feelings. When God created Adam, he gave Adam the soul, the spirit. The soul is our SPIRTUAL being. Without the soul, we are nothing. God communicates with our inner souls through the Holy Spirit, and he wants us to have communication with him in that dimension, the SPIRITUAL dimension.

How can love God with our souls?

a- one of the ways is worshiping Him. Jesus wanted us to worship God with spirit and truth. We are in church today. Your body is here. You can sing and even use words of prayer, but your spirit can be somewhere else. We need to worship him in spirit and truth. There will be false worship and false teaching without truth.

The whole Evangelical community went and still is going through the shock of the last week’s scandal. Such and important pastor and a leader who was teaching us, who was preaching to us. Many were saved through him. Yet, in him, there was no spirit and truth. He did confess saying he was living in a false life of lie and deceit. The point I like to raise here is that I am not angry that he was fallen. We all have problems. The problem was he was living in false life away from the TRUTH. Preaching the Truth, yet worshiping away from The Truth of Jesus Christ. That is dangerous.

How can we love God with all our Soul?

b- Read his Word and obey what you read. It means time and commitment daily to His Word.

c- You can love God by soul when you spend time in prayer and confession. What I mean, you pray and praise God for Him being in your life. Also You confess to him, and ask him to strengthen you soul, your inner man.

Love God with ALL YOUR MIND:

Loving God with our minds is a special dimension. Jesus added this part in his quotation of the Old Testament.

“We must love God with all our mind. The “mind” is the faculty of perception and reflection that directs our opinions and judgments. Our love for God requires more than an emotional response or a swirl of activity in God’s name. We must love God with our intelligence. …. Thinking about our faith is not something to fear; it is a requirement. God has no use for lazy minds.

What can God do with those who are content to remain forever in spiritual kindergarten and never progress beyond “Now I lay me down to sleep” prayers? The early Christians were tough-minded. …

They read, studied, wrote, and served God with all their minds.”¹

“Kloukhet Kordzadze,” (Use your mind) was often used in our school life. We have the tendency not to use our minds and just do things without thinking. I love the parable of the ten virgins. Some used their minds and they were prepared; unfortunately, the others were not prepared.

If we decide not to love God with our minds, our minds will be a good instrument for Satan. Paul in his writings says, “Think on these things, whatever is good, true and beautiful….” Also in Romans 12:1, he says, “Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but transformed by the renewing of your mind.”

Love God with ALL YOUR STRENGTH:

Yesterday (at the Church Bazaar) we all needed this important word, strength. Yes, after one year of preparation, thank God we had a wonderful festival: a festival of food, music and goodies. Festival of Love, festival of being together with the community. This can happen only if we are ready to devote our strength.

Serving God needs energy, it needs strength. We have different services in our church and all of you are invited to different areas of service. The point is to be available to serve God.

Irving Berlin died shortly after his 100^th birthday. He wrote words for 1500 popular songs, including “God Bless America” and “White Christmas”. He came to the USA from Russia when he was child. He did not finish grade school. He did not read music, yet he wrote these wonderful words. They asked him about his secret. He said: “Work, work, work.

I would love to see more people in our church who love God with their strength. How come when some work, others sit and watch without helping each other? Use your might for the glory of the Lord.

Strength also means making your possessions available to God. Please notice that after this discussion, Jesus noticed the widow’s offering. She gave everything to God. She believed in loving God in all her strength.

Howard Truman writes about a spiritual:

I got shoes, you got shoes

All God’s chillun got shoes.

When we get to Heaven

We’re goin’ to put on our shoes

An’ shout all over God’s Heaven

before singing the next line, these slaves, who many times did not have shoes and had no freedom to shout or walk all over God’s earth, would look up at the big house where the master lived and sing:

But everybody talking about Heaven

Ain’t going there.²

We are invited to Love God with our whole being: ALL FOUR PARTS. We need the heart, the soul, the mind and the strength. Let us use all these for His Glory.

Amen