Do you really love God?

My daily Bible reading brought me to this verse..

Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. –Mark 12:30

Loving people whom we tangibly interact with takes effort and intentionality. Much more to love the Lord who we don’t see and at times, rarely feel.

So how does loving Him with all our heart, soul, mind and strength looks like?

Let’s untangle the context of why Jesus said it.

Based on my readings from some commentaries, Mark 12:28–34 happened during the last week before Jesus' crucifixion where He spent His days teaching people and answering questions from Jewish religious leaders in the temple courtyard. A Pharisee asked Him what the greatest commandment of the Mosaic Law is; to which Jesus replied "to love God".

But "Love" here doesn't just mean to have affections for. It is from the Greek root word agapao, or agape. To agape someone is a choice. It means to choose to faithfully love no matter what and to revere Him as honorable, true and loving that we respond in Him in obedience.

He then added more distinction to this kind of love. "Heart" from the Greek root word kardia or the center of one's life that drives one's beliefs, emotions, thoughts, and intentions. "Soul" is from the Greek root word psychē which is similar to the heart, but focuses on the vital force that keeps us alive. Mind is nous in Greek which means understanding. Strength, is also translated into English as "might," or the effort and passion with which we love God.

The heart, soul, and mind direct how we feel and what we do whilst strength is the force that determines the extent.

So, "heart, soul, mind and strength" cover every aspect of our personalities, being, and thoughts and everything which influence our feelings, beliefs, desires, and intentions.

Profound and hard.

I guess before we can do such, we have to know Him first. We have to know what He did for us, what makes Him smile and what displeases Him, simply because we can’t love someone fully whom we haven’t fully known. How do we do this? By spending time with Him diligently in Prayer and in reading His Word, the Bible.

Loving God with all your heart means having a heart like His. His heart inclined towards loving the unlovable and the worst sinners and bleeding for those who refuse to repent. In short, living a life with purpose aligned to His and His mission here on Earth.

Loving God with all your strength means allowing the Holy Spirit that resides in you to empower you to do the things you know you can’t do on your own. Your limited strength submitted to His unlimited power to allow you to work, forgive, love and serve outside of your comfort zone just to bring people closer to Him.

Loving God with all of you is the overflow of the love we first received. Like what we always hear, we can’t give something we don’t have. We can only love if we have embraced that we’re loved and we can only give our heart to Him if we know that He has given His all for us.

Loving God means being committed to Him no matter what.

Practically speaking, loving the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and with all your strength could mean:

• Waking up early just to talk to Him to know how He wants you to spend your day.

• Using your money to help someone who’s been hospitalized even if you want to use it to buy the latest Apple product with the intention to introduce Jesus.

• Discipling others with the time you eagerly want to just do Netflix and Chill..

• Forgiving someone who betrays you like how Jesus forgave those who crucified Him..

• Arriving 1 hour earlier than the congregation to arrange chairs beforehand..

• Faithfully tithing even if your budget is tight..

• Giving up your dream career because He’s calling you to serve full time..

• Surrendering the relationship you long for when He asks you to let go..

• Not letting go of the mission until the day He calls you home, as such.

"The greater our personal knowledge of His love for an undeserving sinner like us, the more likely we'll want to love Him with all that we have and all that we are."

What makes it harder though is this world's call for us to focus only on ourselves. We have to look deeply on how Jesus shows us that a life is lived wrongly if it’s lived only for ourselves.

Would you dare say that you really desire to Agape-love God with your all?

If not yet, the first thing to do is to look to the Cross where He trampled all our sins in exchange of severe blows, bruises and blood just to show that He Agape-love you with His all.