May 4, 2022

Matthew 22: 37 (NIV)

Jesus replied, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.”

The test of our love for Christ isn’t the intensity of our feelings, but the consistency of our obedience.*

For all our talk of feeling things in our hearts, the actual organ is just a muscle that pumps blood. All those feelings that we think of as originating in our hearts actually come from our minds – our brains – the same as our thoughts. Loving God with our minds involves choosing to love him. It is a deliberate decision. Intentional. On purpose. I believe that loving him with our souls requires us to cross over into surrender, submission, loss of self. 

Jesus knew everything that I just mentioned about the heart: it is just an organ but we associate it with feelings. So where does the heart fit in? 

We humans put a lot of emphasis on feelings - and not always in a good way!

• Emotions tend to have more influence over our decisions than our minds. 
• Negative feelings can lead us into sinful behavior. 
• Looking to recapture a good feeling can be just as powerful in motivating us to impropriety. 
• We allow our feelings to come between us and the Lord. 

Anything that separates us from God becomes idolatry. If we are to love the Lord with our hearts, we must allow him to master our feelings. We can love him with our minds and our souls even when we don’t feel like it, but we haven’t fulfilled his command until he is Lord of the bad feelings - anger, lust, resentment – and Lord of what makes us happy. 

Sounds a little overwhelming, doesn’t it? Someone has described this as the number one command for how we should spend our breaths,* so take a deep breath and start loving God with your heart. And soul. And mind.

Every carnal lust in a man's heart is an idol; and whatsoever engrosses the affections, or has more of them than God himself has, or is preferred to him.*