A NEW BEGINNING
LOVE GOD WITH EMOTIONS AND INTELLECT
Exclusive: Greg Laurie explains Jesus' exhortation from Matthew 22
What is your highest priority in life? What are your goals? Your objectives? All of us channel our energies, passions and thoughts toward something in life. What is it for you?
Many people waste their lives majoring on the minors. They don’t have a clear focus and objective in mind. What should be the focus of every person? We find the answer in Matthew’s gospel, where Jesus said,
“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind” (Matthew 22:37 NKJV).
Jesus was quoting from Deuteronomy 6:5, where the word used for love primarily speaks of an act of the mind and will. It is the determined care for the welfare of someone or something. It includes emotion, but it isn’t pure emotion. It is also a commitment. It is the Hebrew equivalent of agape, the New Testament word for love that speaks of a committed, dedicated love.
Too many of us think of love as something emotional that comes and goes. Love isn’t just an emotion; love also includes commitment. It includes dedication. Emotions will come and go, but love is far more than that.
Jesus essentially was saying that if we have a right relationship with God, there will be no problems with his commandments.
We won’t see God’s commandments as restrictive.
Rather, we’ll see them as liberating.
We’ll see them as barriers and walls of protection to keep the evil out rather than bars to keep us in. Jesus was saying that love is the basis for all obedience. And if we really love God, then we naturally will want to do the things that please him.
We are to love the Lord our God with a dedicated, committed love – with all of our heart, with all of our soul, and with all of our minds.
To the ancient Hebrews, the heart referred to the core of one’s personal being.
Proverbs 4:23 says, “Keep your heart with all diligence, for out of it spring the issues of life” (NKJV).
So we are to love the Lord our God with all of our personal being.
The Hebrew word for soul in this verse speaks of emotion. It’s the same word Jesus used when he cried out in the Garden of Gethsemane, “My soul is exceedingly sorrowful, even to death” (Matthew 26:38 NKJV).
Loving God includes our emotions.
Then we are to love him with all our minds. The mind corresponds to that which we would usually call might. It speaks of energy and strength, but it also speaks of intellectual commitment and determination.
To love the Lord includes every part of our lives.
We love him with all of our hearts in the deepest parts of our being.
We love him with all of our souls, with our emotions, but we also love him with our minds.
We love him with our intellect.
We love him with our ability to reason.
We love him with all of the strength that is in us.
Some, however, don’t love God with all of their beings. They seem to love the Lord with all of their minds but not all of their souls. They believe certain things to be true, but they aren’t emotionally engaged.
They seem to be afraid to express any emotion toward God.
I find it interesting that people will go to a football game and scream their lungs out for their team and wear bizarre outfits, but they won’t express any emotion toward God. God wants us to love him with our emotions.
He wants us to express our love to him verbally.
Then there are those who love God with their emotions – but we wonder where they’ve put their minds. They seem to operate on raw emotion.
If we really love God, it isn’t just emotion; it’s an intellectual commitment. We love him with reason, with our ability to think. Thus, we want to fill our minds with the truths of God. We need to find the balance.
God wants us to love him with every fiber of our being.
God does not want to share his glory with anyone or anything else (see Isaiah 42:8).
He wants our undivided lo ve. Without question, this should be the natural response to our awareness of his love for us. “We love Him,” the Scriptures say, “because He first loved us” (1 John 4:19 NKJV).
I don’t think we’ll ever understand how much God loves us. It will take a lifetime of discovering the length, the breadth, the depth and the height of the love he has for us.
We need to know that God accepts us as we are. We don’t have to do anything to earn his approval. We don’t have to do anything to merit his love. In spite of our shortcomings, in spite of our sins, God does love us. As we believe in him and receive his gift of eternal life, the Bible says that he makes us “accepted in the Beloved” (Ephesians 1:6 NKJV).
Some people have come from homes in which their father never expressed love or affection toward them. Then they take that concept of their earthly father and place it on their heavenly Father, spending the rest of their lives trying to earn the approval that God already has given them.
God loves us as we are. Of course, He doesn’t want to leave us that way. He wants to change us, but he does love us. He loves us when we do well, and he loves us when we fail. Realizing that makes me want to love him.
You see, I love God because he first loved me. So instead of saying, “I’d better keep God’s commandments to show him I love him and to earn his love,” I say, “I want to keep his commandments because of his love for me.
I want to keep his commandments because I know they are right.”
Augustine said, “Love God, and do as you please.” That almost sounds like a heretical statement, but if we really love God with all of our hearts, souls and minds, we will want to do the things that please him—not because we have to, not because we fear retribution, but because we want to.
Let’s make a recommitment today to love God with all of our hearts, souls and minds.
http://www.wnd.com/2018/01/love-god-with-emotions-and-intellect/?cat_orig=faith
No comments:
Post a Comment