Love God.

Last week, we wrapped up our series through 1 John. We were trying to answer the question, “Are You Sure?”, helping you see from God’s Word what it takes to have a relationship with Christ.

We said, though, that last week was also a turning point for us, because we took time to define what love looks like.

As we defined it from 1 John 4, we found out several important things:

First, that our love is based off God’s love for us. We didn’t love first, he did.

However, we see that we should live out the same kind of love he shows us; a love that sends, sacrifices, and secures.

That understanding of love is going to drive us as we take a closer look at what we mean when we use our phrase here: “Our Goal Is Love”.

That phrase comes from 1 Timothy 1:5, which helps us as a church figure out who God has called us to be.

Based off what we see in this verse, we say that our goal is love, that we would love God and others in our family, church, community, and world.

Last week, we took the time to define love. We said that love is a sacrificial response to and concern for another. It isn’t simply romantic love, nor is it a spineless love that won’t confront.

Instead, it is based off the love God showed us on the cross, intentionally, actively giving His Son as a sacrifice for us.

This morning, we are beginning to apply that to specific areas.

Over the next few weeks, we will explain what we believe the Bible teaches us about living out that kind of sacrificial, intentional, active love.

We believe that as we live out this love in these five areas, we will grow into disciples of Christ; people who look like and act like Jesus, which is what God is calling us to become.

Last week, we said that our love is only a reflection of how God has loved us.

We don’t conjure or drum up love on our own; we respond back to Him and others the love that God has shown us.

If He is the source, and He has loved us first, then it only makes sense that our highest priority is to love Him in return.

Jesus articulates this in Mark 12:28-30.

Go ahead and open your Bibles to that passage, because it is the basis of what we are looking at today.

For those of you who are asking, “Wait, didn’t we just talk about this,” you are correct. We did cover this passage back in February as we worked through Mark.

When we did, though, we only took a quick look at the two commands and didn’t take time to really dig deep into what God is asking of us.

By way of reminder, this is in the middle of a section where various Jewish leaders are asking Jesus questions to try to trip Him up.

They want Him to say something that they can use to get Him killed or to discredit Him in any way.

In the midst of that, another man asks a question, but his motivation is different.

Read it with me...

In Jesus’ response, He tells us that the first and greatest commandment, the one of highest importance, is to love God.

We will tackle this first commandment this morning and then spend the next five weeks covering the next.

Let’s not move too quickly through this, though, because there is a dangerous trap we can fall into.

If we aren’t careful, we are can assume that loving others is how we love God.

It is certainly a part of it, but notice that there are two distinct commands here.

You can fulfill the command to love God, even if you are stranded alone on a desert island with nothing but a volleyball to keep you company.

In the same way, it is possible to give your life in service for others without having a genuine love relationship with God.

That’s why we have spent so much time recently making sure you know that you are genuinely right with God based off his sacrifice for us, not off our good works.

Back to the command, Jesus tells us clearly to love God.

He is quoting from Deuteronomy 6:4-5, and every Jew would have been familiar with these words.

If you have been in church for any length of time, you have heard them yourself.

He begins by reminding us that there is only one true God.

The one true God is worthy of our complete and total love.

In fact, Jesus uses 4 different terms to describe how we should love God.

All these combine to give us this truth: Loving God takes everything we are and everything we have.

If you walk out with nothing else today, I want you to hear that truth: loving God takes everything we are and everything we have.

Read verse 30 again.

Jesus commanded us to love God with our hearts, our souls, our minds, and our strength.

How much of each of those are we supposed to use in loving God? “With all…with all…with all…with all…”

In case it wasn’t clear, God repeats it with each different part He mentions!

So how much of us are we supposed to employ in loving God? All of us!

Dr. Paul Fink, one of the professors at Liberty to whom I am most indebted, used to say, “’All’ means ‘all’ and that’s all ‘all’ means.”

I must engage everything I have and everything I am in loving God!

Can you say that? Can you say that your every desire this week was God-honoring; that at every chance, you communed with God; that you continually turned your thoughts toward Him, all your plans honored Him, every thought you entertained was pleasing to Him; and that everything you poured yourself into this week showed a love for Him?

No? Me either, yet that is the aim of our goal—to reflect back to God that same sacrificial, active, intentional love that He demonstrated towards us.

Let’s try to put a finer point on it.

As we do this, I want to make one note: Jesus’ emphasis here was that our love involves every part of our being.

He was not specifically highlighting that we were made up of three parts (body, soul, spirit) or four parts or anything of the sort.

In fact, Mark and Luke give us four different parts where Matthew and the original passage in Deuteronomy only give us three.

The emphasis of this passage is not on how we describe the different aspects of our being, but rather on using all of who we are to sacrificially, actively, and intentionally love God.

With that said, though, it may be helpful for us to use these four terms as a framework to help us highlight specific ways in which we love God with everything we have.

In our Core Values, we have spelled these out in somewhat greater detail, so let’s talk about how we see each of these aspects playing into loving God.

First, we love God with:

1) Our Hearts

Jesus first commands us to love God with all our hearts.

The heart is a little confusing for us, because for those of us in 21st century America, we look at the heart as the seat of the emotions.

That’s why we say that we have a broken heart after a failed relationship.

For Jews, the heart was actually something even more central than that.

The heart was the central core of who you are.

That’s why the writer of Proverbs would write:

Proverbs 4:23 CSB

Guard your heart above all else, for it is the source of life.

The heart is your most central, core, part of your being.

The heart is where everything begins, including your desires and affections.

Because the heart is so foundational, we believe that loving God with our heart means something like this:

We desire God more than anything and are developing a greater dependence on Him.

To love God with all our heart is to have Him first and foremost in our every desire and design.

Loving God is growing to desire Him more than anything on earth, all the while recognizing our deep need for Him.

Let me ask you, genuinely, sincerely this morning: What is the most important thing in your life?

Don’t immediately give me a church answer; use the following questions to help you really think about what is most important.

They come from a book called Gospel by J.D. Greear to help you think through this:

What one thing do you hope most is in your future?

What is the one thing you most worry about losing?

If you could change one thing about yourself right now, what would it be?

What thing have you sacriﬁced most for?

Who is there in your life that you feel like you can’t forgive, and why?

When do you feel the most signiﬁcant?

What triggers depression in you?

Where do you turn for comfort when things aren’t going well?

If you can’t say that God is what you desire more than anything else, that your relationship with Him is more important than anything, then you cannot say you love God with your whole heart.

As the old infomercials say, “But wait! There’s more…”

Not only do we love God with all our heart, but we must also love Him with all…

2) Our Souls.

We love God also with all our souls.

Again, it is hard to make a clear distinction, but we often think of our souls as the immaterial part of us that communes with God.

You could, for the sake of our discussion today, understand your soul as the spiritual hub of your being.

We are called to love God with all our soul.

For our core values, we chose to describe loving God with our soul as:

We communicate with God regularly through prayer.

There is more to loving God with our soul than this, but at the very least, loving God with our spiritual self means that I will want to talk to Him!

Samantha spent a night away from our family recently at a retreat with some friends. I was trying to leave her alone because I wanted her to have some time to recharge. I can’t tell you how many times I wanted to text her and tell her about something that was going on! Why? Because I love her! I wanted to communicate with her!

Do you feel that way about God?

I know some of you aren’t as verbal as I am, but doesn’t your soul cry out, wanting to speak to and hear from God?

How long can you go without talking to Him?

Paul said it shouldn’t be long!

1 Thessalonians 5:17 CSB

pray constantly,

That doesn’t mean that you go around all day with your eyes closed and your hands folded; it means that you are continually communicating with God.

You see a beautiful sunset, and you stop and say, “Wow, God, thank you for creating such a beautiful world.”

You hear people behind you in line at the store talk about something you know isn’t God honoring, so you stop and ask God to draw them to Himself.

When you realize you have sinned and dishonored the God who loves you, you quickly take time to remedy that through confession and prayer.

Loving God with our souls means, in part, that we pray more and more, longing to speak with Him and hear from Him and rest in Him.

How long do you go without praying?

Our goal is that we would love God with all our soul.

We love God with our heart, growing in our desire for Him. That spills into our souls, causing us to want to talk with Him in prayer more and more.

That is closely linked with the next part of our being. We love God with all our…

3) Our Minds

When we think about our minds, we most naturally think about our thoughts.

Our mind is where we process information and do our thinking.

To love God with all my mind, then, is to allow Him to transform my mind so that all my thoughts demonstrate that I love Him.

Think of it this way: Loving God with my mind means making Him my default thought.

Do you know what I mean?

What do you think of when you have nothing else to think about?

In lulls in your daily activity, or in the quiet of your bed at night, where does your mind turn?

When your mind wanders, where does it go?

Does it turn to sex or food or pleasure or money or your kids or your spouse? Do your thoughts turn to a dream for your future or worry about your health?

How often does your mind drift to the things of God? Do you go back to chew on that passage you read this morning or the sermon you listened to last week?

I believe that loving God with our mind means we will make God our default thought.

Does that mean all I ever think of is church stuff? No, but it means that as I grow, even my thoughts of whether I should stay up and watch that one more episode of something or which book I should read or any level of decision should always be informed by who God is and what He has done.

In the quiet moments, my mind should wander back to the cross, to the God who has always been there for me.

How do I get there?

God tells us that, now that we are Christians, our minds need to be changed:

Romans 12:2 CSB

Do not be conformed to this age, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may discern what is the good, pleasing, and perfect will of God.

The best way to continue to transform your mind is to continue to study God’s Word. That’s why we believe that loving God with our minds means, in part:

We appreciate God’s Word more and are growing in our knowledge of how He has shown Himself in it.

As we study God’s Word, both individually and as a church, we start seeing more and more how God expects us to think.

We see stories of men and women whose minds were directed towards loving God and we also learn the consequences of minds still set on pleasing ourselves.

We learn patterns to help us think rightly about life. By the way, a great place to start with that is Philippians 4:8.

Can I say I am loving God with my mind if I am not training my mind to dwell on Him?

Can I say that I am loving God with all my mind if I am not thinking about Him?

If I am loving God with my heart and growing to desire Him more, loving Him with my soul and communicating with Him, loving Him with my mind and thinking about Him, then the last aspect will naturally follow.

We must love God with all…

4) Our Strength

Here, the emphasis turns outward.

If we love God with everything inside us, we will show that love for Him through what we do.

We summarize this by saying that to love God with all our strength is to…

We use the gifts, talents, and abilities God has given us to live out what we believe.

According to Jesus, all my strength should be turned towards actively, intentionally, and sacrificially loving God.

Here’s a great verse to sum this idea up:

Colossians 3:17 CSB

And whatever you do, in word or in deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.

Could Jesus sign His name to every word you have said (and thought) and every deed you have done this week?

Loving God with all my strength means that everything from making coffee in the morning to praying with someone who is hurting to sharing the Gospel to filing that report at work to tucking the kids in at night can and should be done in the strength God supplies for the glory He deserves.

Is that how you look at your day, or do you give God what you see as His part and then spend the rest of the day pursuing your desires?

That’s not how this works! If I am going to love God with all my heart, soul, mind, and strength, then it takes everything I have and everything I am!

Do you feel defeated yet?

To quote loosely from Robert Frost, we all have miles to go before we sleep.

There is not a one of us who loves God as he should.

That’s why we echo the sentiments of the Apostle Paul:

Philippians 3:12–14 CSB

Not that I have already reached the goal or am already perfect, but I make every effort to take hold of it because I also have been taken hold of by Christ Jesus. Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and reaching forward to what is ahead, I pursue as my goal the prize promised by God’s heavenly call in Christ Jesus.

Don’t miss a key phrase in this passage, because in this lies our hope: “I was laid hold of by Christ Jesus”.

Paul said it wasn’t his love for God or his earnestness or his sincerity that saved him; it was because Jesus laid hold of Him.

We aren’t saved because of our love for God; our love for God springs out of a heart that has been laid hold of by Christ.

You see, this is how Jesus loves us! He gave everything for us when he died in our place, and now he invites us to find life by giving him everything in return.

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