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Loving God with all your mind means backing up your passion with knowledge. He wants you to use your reasoning to understand and love him more fully. Begin by asking questions. In fact, he hopes for it.
Then seek his answers. Read the Bible and find out what the words mean.
Listen to the experiences of others. Ask him for guidance. Make an effort to find out who he is. Discover what he likes and what he dislikes. Loving God with all your mind also means directing your thoughts to valuable things. When you focus on hope and love instead of fear and hate, your heart and actions follow. Think about things that are pure and lovely and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise. Loving God with all your strength means persevering for him each day. To what lengths will you go for the one you love?
It means you must muster your resources to protect your relationship with God every single day. It means being honest, and sometimes it means doing the unpopular thing. It means listening to truth and holding yourself accountable. Loving God strongly is walking away from gossip when you prefer to be part of the group. Every day is made up of hundreds of little moments that are opportunities to love God. And every single opportunity matters. When loving moments are strung together, they form days. When loving days are strung together, they become months. When loving months are strung together, they stretch into years.
And over time, years of love for God make up one extraordinary love story. Copy the following code and paste it into your website's code to display this article on your site.
Are we striving to put the Lord first and to please Him? You mothers who are especially charged with the righteous rearing of the youth of Zion, are you not putting God first when you honor your divine calling by not leaving the homefront to follow the ways of the world? Yes, Jesus Christ was in the flesh and was both man and Son of God. He doesn't love us because we're lovable or because we make Him feel good; He loves us because He is love. His singular desire has always been a passionate, enduring relationship with you.
Is it possible to experience God personally in your daily life? To trust in God, we must start by looking at what he says about himself. God is often called the Father. Is his love like that of a parent? What would love look like in human form? Hugh Halter examines how Jesus personified love. Are there signs in life that tell us there's something more out there? Perhaps a higher being? Earl McClellan talks about how love and joy point to the existence of God. As a mother of a child with Down Syndrome, Rebekah Lyons discusses what unconditional love is and how it's based on who you are rather than what you do.
Love is more than something we feel—it's something we do. Andy Crouch talks about the purpose of life and how we fulfill that purpose through the act of love. Don't have an account? Forgot Password Reset Check your email for a link to change password. Haven't linked your account? There are too many mediocre things in life. Dream for an Insomniac 1 Most people hope for an extraordinary love.
Love with Passion and Purpose God has a single expectation for a relationship with you. Love with All Your Heart Loving God with all your heart means reserving the best of your affection for him. Each day, set aside time to get to know God. In every area of your life, look for ways to show your commitment to him. Each day, be willing to fight for your relationship with God. Love in the Moments Every day is made up of hundreds of little moments that are opportunities to love God.
Northfield Publishing, , Edmund Clarence Stedman Boston: How to Love God By: And in Deuteronomy 5: Also in 1 John, we receive whatever we ask from Him, because we keep His commandments and do what pleases Him. Also in Deuteronomy, the steadfast love of God is shown to the ones who love Him and keep His commandments. There is a clear link then between the love and favor of God and the doing of the will of God. To say it differently let us not think that disobeying God, neglecting His Word and His commandments, does not really matter, because God loves us anyway.
Also let us not think that because we say we love God we actually love Him.
I think whether we love God or not is shown by the answer to the following simple question: Do we do what pleases Him, His Word, His commandments? If the answer is yes, then we love God. If the answer is no, then we do not love Him. It is as simple as that. Another area of confusion, when it comes to doing the will of God, is the idea that we should do the will of God only if we feel doing it.
But tell me something: Do you get up in the morning and think whether you feel going to work and depending on whether you feel it or not you pull yourself out of bed or deeper under the blankets? Is this how you are doing it?
You DO your work regardless of how you feel about it! But when it comes to doing the will of God we have given to feelings too much of a place. And to use an example from what the Lord told us, He said: He did not say: The rotten eye has to be plugged out, either we feel it or not feel it.
So also with the will of God: In Matthew 21, Jesus was questioned once again by the chief priests and the elders of the people. To answer one of their questions He gave them the following parable:. A man had two sons. And he went to the first and said, 'Son, go and work in the vineyard today.
And he went to the other son and said the same. And he answered, 'I go, sir,' but did not go. Which of the two did the will of his father? Their answer was correct. The first son did not feel doing the will of his father. He plainly said to him: I will not go to the vineyard today. But then he thought about it and changed his mind. Who knows what caused this change. He wanted to sleep more, drink coffee slowly and perhaps go out with his friends.
But then he thought of his father and because he loved the father, he changed his mind, pulled himself out of bed and went and did what his father wanted him to do! Perhaps he went back to sleep, then called a friend and disappeared doing what he wanted. Which of these two sons did the will of the father? The answer is obvious. Now, we saw previously that loving the Father means doing His will. We could therefore also ask the following: Yes it is far better to do the will of God and feel doing it, but between not doing the will of the Father and doing it without strongly wanting to do it, the option to be chosen is: Now the above does not mean that we cannot or should not speak to the Father and ask Him for other possible options.
The Lord wants the channels of communications with His children-servants always open. What happened in Gethsemane the night Jesus was delivered to be crucified is characteristic. Jesus was in the garden with his disciples and Judas the traitor was coming, together with the servants of the chief priests and of the elders, to arrest Him and crucify Him. Jesus was in agony. He would rather have this cup removed from him. And He asked the Father about it:.
Nevertheless, not my will, but yours, be done. And being in an agony he prayed more earnestly; and his sweat became like great drops of blood falling down to the ground. There is nothing wrong in asking the Father if there is a way out. There is nothing wrong in asking the Father whether you can stay home today and not go to the vineyard! What is wrong is to stay at home anyway without asking Him!
But it is not wrong to ask Him for an exception or another way. In fact if there is no other way, you may get a special encouragement in moving forward and doing His will. Jesus got such an encouragement: And in that case it was not. And Jesus accepted this. As He said to Peter after Judas with his company of guards arrived:. And because of this, because He always did what pleased the Father, the Father never left Him alone.
He has not left me alone, for I always do the things that are pleasing to him.
God is supremely powerful, infinitely valuable, and endlessly loving, and shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and But we are also to love him with how we talk, and what we do with our. Editorial Reviews. About the Author. Andy Warren has been preaching since in Arkansas, Missouri, Michigan and Texas. He and his wife Mary have two .
And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.