Loving God With All My Strength
Matthew 22:36-40 (ESV) 36 “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” 37 And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. 38 This is the great and first commandment. 39 And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. 40 On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”
In his Gospel Matthew did not mention loving God with all your strength but in parallel accounts Mark and Luke both referred to loving God with all your strength.
Mark 12:30 (ESV) And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’
Luke 10:27 (ESV) And he answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.”
In His answer Jesus was quoting Deuteronomy 6:5 which was part of the daily prayer of devout Jews.
The Hebrew word translated into “might” was meh-ode’, which means - exceedingly, much, might, force or abundance.
In the gospels the Greek word is ischys, which is used in the New Testament 11 times, meaning strength (4x), power (2x), might (2x), ability (1x), mighty (1x) and mightily (1x). 6 out of 10 of these refer to God’s might.
Let us focus on the word “power” and its meaning as a way to understand practical and practicable ways to love God with all our strength or power.
The main question for today is: How can we love God with all of our power?
Does it mean that we are praying to God while we are lifting weights or running a marathon? Not exactly, but this idea is not far from the truth.
Power is defined by engineers as the amount of work done during a period of time. A simple equation for power is Work/Time (work divided by time).
Work is defined as force times displacement. Displacement is the distance something is moved.
So, POWER = FORCE x MOVEMENT/TIME
Force is equal to effort.
Movement is equal to distance.
Time is equal to duration of the action.
So, imagine pushing a heavy object across the floor. The object is heavy so you need to apply force to the object to overcome the weight and friction of the object on the floor. You push perhaps with several pounds of force. Once it starts moving you push for 5 seconds and it moves. Then you measure how far it moved. Lets say it moved 10 inches. If you applied more force it would move further. If you pushed for 10 seconds it would move twice as far. The force or effort that you applied times the distance the object moved, divided by the elapsed time is equal to the power exercised.
As an example: We all have heard the term “horse power” when describing car engines.
1 horse power is equal to the power needed to move 550 lbs one foot in one second.
So, when we talk about “Loving God with all our power” there are three things that contribute to that activity:
Effort (or force)
Time
Distance (or movement)
Let us consider how each of these things contribute to living God with all our power.
A. Effort
What effort or force can we apply to our relationship with God?
Let us look at several ways that we can invest effort into a RELATIONSHIP with God. There are many ways that we can invest in a loving relationship with God: Caring for others, service in our church, evangelism and outreach, giving generously, obeying God’s will, etc. But today let us consider relational aspects just as we would in any intimate relationship or friendship. How can we grow in our personal relationship with Jesus Christ and love Him with all our power.
Bible reading for meaning. Read slowly and read smaller portions each day.
How does this contribute to loving God more deeply?
Often when we are reading we are reading to follow a plan like reading the Bible in one year or following a devotional guide. We may read several chapters in a session. We read through without paying attention. The better way to read is to read for meaning. To read slowly and not set aside the scripture until we have a clear message from God.
When you want to commune with God and hear from Him you may try to listen for His voice we may do it by sitting in silence. Then thoughts come racing into your mind. Thoughts about work, or a situation with the kids, or the errand that you need to run or the broken thing that needs to be fixed, etc etc. Your mind becomes like a busy train station with so much noise and crowded thoughts and worries. Emptying our minds to hear from God may instead be emptying our minds to allow Satan to fill with distractions. But there is a very good and practical solution to this problem: Meditating on scripture.
Psalm 77:12 (NIV)
I will consider all your works and meditate on all your mighty deeds.”
Psalm 119:15 (ESV)
I will meditate on your precepts and fix my eyes on your ways.
Psalm 145:5 (ESV)
On the glorious splendor of your majesty, and on your wondrous works, I will meditate.
Eastern mystics and Buddhists teach about emptying themselves to find enlightenment. God teaches just the opposite. He teaches that we should fill ourselves with truth and be filled by He Himself, the third person of the trinity, the Holy Spirit. The Psalmists spoke about meditating on God’s nature, His instructions and His wonders. This filled them with hope and joy. When we are focused on the Lord, then we begin to know Him better as a person. Additionally, when we are filled with truth and with God then there is no room for depression, anger, lust, greed, envy, arrogance, fear and/or ignorance….and distractions.
Conclusion: Reading for meaning causes us to meditate and to listen.
2. Conversations with God: Ask the Holy Spirit to reveal the heart of God to you in His scriptures and in your time with Him.
In our pursuit of loving God with all our power we should be pursuing Him to express our love and not to get something from Him. Our aim is simply to love Him and show our affection. But you may ask, how is it possible for me to love someone I cannot see with my eyes, hear with my ears and touch with my hands?
The answer is that God has revealed a great deal about himself in scripture. The Bible is an endless source of knowledge about the person, God. I believe that we will continue to study the Holy Bible in heaven and with our perfected minds and spirits we will be able to see eternally deep things that we missed in this imperfect world and that we will endlessly amazed by God’s unfathomable, immeasurable, unlimited eternal nature.
It is essential that we understand that we are able to access the deep truths of God even in this broken world, through the counselling and mentoring of the Holy Spirit.
1 Corinthians 2:9-10 (ESV) 9 But, as it is written, “What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him”-- 10 these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God.
The Holy Spirit is like a heavenly web crawler but far, far superior. When you are sitting down to read the Bible you can ask the Holy Spirit to lead you and guide you to understand things that you want and need to learn about God.
Try changing your devotional routine. Make it relational.
1. Ask questions.
2. Listen and wait for answers.
3. Receive answers.
When I was a young adult my Pastor, Bill Wortman, encouraged me to have conversations with God. He prayed over me and asked that the Holy Spirit would teach me. He taught me to ask questions and expect answers.
Sure enough, that is what happened. I learned that I could go to God with my Bible and ask questions about problems in life, about divisive doctrinal issues, about dating, about school, about family and most importantly about Himself….and He would lead me to the answers. This made my relationship with God much more personal. I did not have to read many books about Christian lifestyle or how to have a happy marriage or how to overcome depression or how to be freed from anxiety or how to deal with theological arguments and controversies from fellow believers. Books are wonderful but going to God personally and learning from Him by letting Him guide you through scripture and speak to you personally will radically change your “devotional” life.
The act of listening is something that is being increasingly encouraged in the church and thus is exemplified in Right Now media where several teachers discuss the necessity to slow down and listen to God.
The series “Whisper” by Mark Batterson (Lead Ptr National Community Church, Wash DC) teaches us how to listen and the 7 ways God speaks to us. To discover what those seven ways are you must really listen to the short course.
In his conclusion Mark teaches that God always approaches us with love, because He IS love:
“God loves us because of who He is. When we succeed He says “I love you.” When we fail He says “I love you.”. When we have faith God says “I love you.” When we are full of doubt God says “I love you”. And He says it through scriptures, desires, dreams, doors, people, promptings and pain. Love is His answer to everything. Why? Because He is love. Believe it or not, God loves you. He actually likes you. He is especially fond of you. That’s why He wants us to hear His voice. But even more than that He wants us to hear His heart. He whispers softer and softer so that we get closer and closer and when we get close enough He envelopes us in His arms and tells us that He loves us.”
Studying to know God’s heart
Change the way you study the Bible so that you learn more about the person, the nature and the heart of Jesus Christ. Biblical history, archeology, apologetics, eschatology, doctrinal studies, etc are all interesting and can be very motivating and inspiring. But they can also be completely unrelational and may not lead us to the true gospel. This is very simply exemplified by observing the hundreds and thousands of well-educated biblical scholars who do not believe in fundamental aspects of Christian life such as the accuracy of the Bible, the uniqueness of Jesus our Savior, the sinlessness of Jesus, etc etc.
Our Bible studies should always lead us to the heart of God. Studying is an exercise for the mind. Our studies should cause our minds to align with the Holy Spirit who is dwelling in us. Our studies should draw us closer to knowing and loving Jesus. Our studies should cause a response of adoration, love and affection toward Jesus.
As an example I think of the story of Jesus cleansing the temple. This was probably the most physically violent moment in Jesus life on earth. What most of us remember is that he made a whip, was flipping tables and tossing coins and money everywhere and opening the pens full of sacrificial animals, just creating total mayhem and shouting at the top of his lungs. We see this as an act of righteous anger. But what most of us miss is the response of witnesses.
Fasting
Pastor Muyiwa presented a very excellent, comprehensive and compelling sermon on fasting on Oct 24. If you missed it then you can find it on YouTube. There you can learn about the necessity, the requirement, the process of fasting and the results. The results may be numerous, including answers to difficult situations, deeper revelations about God and getting closer to God.
Here I will briefly emphasize that fasting can bring us nearer to God. When we fast we:
Free up time usually used for cooking and eating.
We use the freed up time to pray and seek the Lord.
We get weak and tired from not eating. In our weakness we increase our sensitivity to spiritual things.
We have deep cravings for food which we must ignore. (This requires effort and a forceful will to accomplish)
We may suffer and God teaches us more about His sufficiency when we are suffering. (We cannot learn that when we are well fed, pain free and self-sufficiently prospering.)
Time:
Remember that time is an important part of the description of Power.
If no time (duration = 0) is invested in applying force or effort then there is no measurable power.
If little time is invested then little power is applied.
If a lot of time is invested then much power is applied.
God is asking for ALL of our power.
How much time do you invest in loving God? If we are honest, probably the best of us may read a short, one page devotional reading, then a few minutes in the Bible and a few minutes of prayer.
Let’s say that our best is 30 minutes.
Let us pause here and think about this.
Close your eyes and think about your daily devotion to a relationship with God or your commitment in a week. Think about the time spent but also the kind of communication and demonstrations of love and desire toward God. Now take that exact behavior and apply it to your relationship with your spouse. Truthfully, for most of us, myself included, our spouses would have divorced us along time ago if we invested the same amount of time and the same quality of communication into our marriage. There simply is no possible way to build a strong loving relationship with 15-30 minutes of routine, pre-programmed readings and one-way communication, every day.
We have already discussed a number of ways to make our communications with God more relational.
Now we need to think about the AMOUNT of time we invest in loving fellowship with Jesus.
(Remember, if we intend to love the Lord with all our power then we need to apply ourselves to the right kind of effort, TIME and movement.)
Common sense tells us that the amount of time we apply to loving God and being loved by God will have a big impact on our relationship with Him and the fulfillment of this command. But does the Bible talk about amount of time invested in our relationship with God?
Psalm 105:4 instructs us to seek God, His power and His presence continually.
Psalms 105:4 (ESV) Seek the LORD and his strength; seek his presence continually!
It is an unending process that we need to follow daily. We need to live our lives 24/7/365 in pursuit of God and even His presence. It is a challenge. It is an adventure. It is a road few are willing to walk on. It is a wonderful pioneering journey going where few have gone. Diving into the depths of God’s eternal being. Discovering the heart of the one who created the earth, our galaxy, billions of others, and everything that exists. Few will share in your travels. It is very personal and you may need to go alone but you will find that you are not alone and that your companion will be Jesus Christ himself.
So let us think beyond 15-30 minutes or even 60 minutes with God in “devotions” and strive for 24 hrs per day.
Let us live with anticipation of God’s glory illuminating our sometimes dull and dreary existence. The Psalmists wrote about their anticipation for God’s goodness and glory.
Psalms 130:5-6 (ESV) I wait for the LORD, my soul waits, and in his word I hope; my soul waits for the Lord more than watchmen for the morning, more than watchmen for the morning.
The watchman’s job is to stay awake all night and watch the surroundings of the city and the horizon, continually worrying about invasion or attack by brutal enemies. All night long he watches intently, peering into the darkness, looking for any signs of impending evil. The nights are dark, lonely, worrisome, fear-filled and stressful.
Then after many hours there is a glimmer of early dawn on the horizon. Some brightening. The watchmen feels some hope. As the morning light spreads across the horizon and the sky brightens and the world is visible again there is a tangible relief. The risen sun drives away the darkness and the evil agents that threaten the city must scurry into caves and ravines to hide.
So, it is for us who seek our Sun and Shield, Jesus Christ. No matter how good we may think let us admit that there are still places in our lives where there is darkness or worry or fear or lurking enemies. So, in our pursuit of God, we wait for Him. We wait with expectation like watchmen, knowing that He will rise up, reveal Himself and shine His bright beams of hope into every shadowy corner in our hearts.
And waiting is not something that is done in a programmed process or in the constraints of 15-30 minutes a day. It is a continual activity. We walk through our entire days looking for God to reveal Himself and to blaze His blinding brightness into every situation at home, at work, at school, in the hospital, at college, in the laboratory, in the auto mechanics shop, at the construction site, on the soccer field, at the nursing home, everywhere!
Thus, when we think about time, there should be no limits.
But let me close this section with three concrete conclusions:
Less time spent results in less power. More time spent results in more power. God wants us to love Him with all our power.
Morning can be a critical time. It is a good practice to establish a habit of turning our mental and spiritual attention to God as soon as we emerge from our sleep state each morning. Instead of allowing our minds to be flooded by worries and our to-do list can we call out to God and wait for Him by thinking about His presence and His strength.
We can engage with God during our commute, listen to audio Bibles, podcasts, worship music, take time to walk with God at lunch break, encourage believing colleagues to meet for prayer, seek God’s support before meetings, etc.
Evening time can also be beneficial when we review God’s blessing and assistance throughout the day and give Him praise and thanksgiving. We can conclude the day by using our last conscious moments recounting all the ways that He helped us throughout.
Movement and distance
Now the last part of learning about loving God with all our power is movement or distance. In this case the movement we are looking for pertains to distance between our hearts and God’s.
But can we be near or far from God?
Doesn’t the scripture tell us that God is present everywhere at all times?
Psalms 139:7-12 (ESV) 7 Where shall I go from your Spirit? Or where shall I flee from your presence? 8 If I ascend to heaven, you are there! If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there! 9 If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, 10 even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me. 11 If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me, and the light about me be night,” 12 even the darkness is not dark to you; the night is bright as the day, for darkness is as light with you.
Acts 17:27b-28a (ESV) “….Yet he is actually not far from each one of us, for “‘In him we live and move and have our being’; as even some of your own poets have said,…..”
Yet numerous scriptures make reference to being far from God:
Psalms 22:11 (ESV) Be not far from me, for trouble is near, and there is none to help.
Psalms 35:22 (ESV) You have seen, O LORD; be not silent! O Lord, be not far from me!
Isaiah 29:13 (ESV) And the Lord said: “Because this people draw near with their mouth and honor me with their lips, while their hearts are far from me, and their fear of me is a commandment taught by men,…”
Jeremiah 2:5 (ESV) Thus says the LORD: “What wrong did your fathers find in me that they went far from me, and went after worthlessness, and became worthless?
You can probably already see that in the context of these scriptures they are not referring to physical distance like feet, yards, meters, kilometers or miles, but rather to moral distance.
When we ignore or turn away from God’s instructions then we are walking down a spiritual (not physical) road that leads us further and further from God’s heart, His love and His blessings. We do harm our relationship with God, and to ourselves, while God remains faithfully seeking to pour His love and His blessings into our lives.
We can also feel far from God in evil or terrifying circumstances such as in wartime or in an extreme disaster.
But God teaches us that we can move closer to Him.
A primary text on being near to God is:
James 4:8 (ESV) Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded.
Two observations about this verse:
It is so very encouraging to know that as soon as you make effort or spend time trying to draw near to God, He will quickly draw near to you.
You may feel far from God because you have been living a double life, claiming to be a Christian but practicing impure things. The first step of effort for you should be repentance, purifying your heart by God’s applied grace and stopping the unclean behaviors.
In concluding our discussion about movement or distance, let me make clear that any EFFORT or TIME that we invest in a loving relationship with God will definitely result in movement closer to the heart of God. Our movement toward God will be large when our effort and our time are large.
Let us consider what actions we can take to begin loving God with all of our power.
Here is a final exhortation from A. W. Tozer:
“Let me exhort you to take this seriously. It is not to be understood as mere Bible teaching to be stored away in the mind along with an inert mass of other doctrines.
It is a marker on the road to greener pastures, a path chiseled against the steep sides of the mount of God. We dare not try to by-pass it if we would follow on in this holy pursuit. We must ascend one step at a time. If we refuse one step we bring our progress to an end. “