“How do you love someone with all your mind?”
“How do you love someone with all your soul?”
These questions have been in my head since I came across this scripture again recently, because I have always thought of love as something the heart does.
The heart is probably the part of the human body mostly associated with emotions, so when we talk about loving someone, we naturally think about how we feel about them.
However, Jesus described our love for God in a much bigger way.
And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.
Matthew 22:37 (KJV)
Now, God did not say, ”love Me with your heart alone”. He mentioned the soul, the mind, and then the heart, which means that loving God involves more than how we feel about Him on a good day.
It involves what occupies our minds, what our souls desire, what our hearts treasure, and ultimately, what we do with all of it.
And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart.
Deuteronomy 6:6 (KJV)
To love God with your mind means allowing Him into your thoughts, your decisions, your plans, and even every other thing you are still trying to figure out. It means that when you are thinking about your future, your career, your relationships, your money, your dreams and your fears, God is kept at the heart of the conversation because He is part of it all.
To love Him with your soul is to give Him the deepest part of you, the part that nobody else can completely reach or understand. It is to desire Him beyond what He can give you, to seek Him beyond what you need from Him, and to stay with Him even when you don’t have an immediate answer to your prayers.
As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God.
Psalm 42:1 (KJV)
Then there is the heart; the place where our affections live, where we form attachments, where we can easily become consumed by the things we love. God wants that, too. He wants to be loved with the part of us that feels deeply, but He also wants our minds and our souls because He wants everything.
And whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord, and not unto men.
Colossians 3:23 (KJV)
I really think that this is what makes loving God so beautiful and, at the same time, so demanding. He is inviting us into a life where our thoughts, desires, emotions, decisions, plans and actions are all brought into our relationship with Him.
Loving God takes everything because He gave everything, and if He commanded us to love Him with all our heart, all our soul, and all our mind, then it means this kind of love is possible.
It means we can grow into a love for God that is does not stop at what we say with our mouths, but something that takes over the way we think, the way we live, and the way we see everything around us.
What would it look like to be completely locked into loving God?
Shalom!
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