"He answered,
'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 'love your neighbor as yourself.'" Luke 10:27
So, you think you love God?
Do you love Him with ALL your heart?
Until you love him with all your heart you
don’t love Him in a way that will please Him OR you.
Do you love Him with ALL your soul?
Until you love Him at the core of your being
you don’t love Him in a way that will satisfy Him Or you.
Do you love Him with ALL your strength?
Until you devote everything you possess
toward loving Him you won’t love Him in a way that will honor Him you won’t
know His love.
And, do you love Him with ALL your mind?
Pastor
Greg Simas offers four unique ways to love the Lord with our minds.
“1. REASON
Isaiah 1:18 “Come
now, and let us reason together, saith the LORD:”
To
reason is to think, understand and form judgments by a process of logic. I
believe that part of loving God with all our mind is loving him logically. For
guys like me this is a relief. I enjoy strategic thinking and order. God has
given this as a gift.
I must
note though, that reason should never trump revelation. The mind is the learner
not the leader. The heart is the leader. Many times the heart receives from the
Lord first and the mind cannot make sense of it, at least initially.
Eventually the mind catches up with what the heart received.
When we
prize reason over revelation we have a God made in our own image and likeness.
Faith in many ways goes beyond reason. It looks to the impossible and trusts in
the All-Knowing God.
Yet
reason is powerful. We can systematically and logically look at the ways God
has intersected our lives and give Him praise.
2. KNOWLEDGE
Hebrews 10:16 “This
is the covenant I will make with them after that time, says the Lord. I will
put my laws in their hearts, and I will write them on their minds.”
To love
God with all our mind involves taking time to fill our mind with God’s Word and
to rightly agree with who He is. When we grow in truth we gain knowledge.
A. W. Tozer once said, “What comes into our minds when we
think about God is the most important thing about us.”
When we
come into agreement with God it awakens love in us. Love itself includes great
depths of knowledge. Loving God is continually refueled when the mind
encounters truth over and over.
Knowing
truth and loving God are deeply connected. Jesus is the Truth. As our mind
grows in the knowledge of Jesus we are liberated to love Him more.
3. MEMORY
Isaiah 63:7 “I will
tell of the kindnesses of the LORD, the deeds for which he is to be praised,
according to all the LORD has done for us.”
The
Bible is filled with commands to remember. Memories lead to gratefulness and
worship. When we use our minds to remember His kindness, faithfulness,
patience, peace etc. we build a foundation of faith, hope and love. We are
loving God with our remembrance.
For
some, we cannot forget the negative events of the past because the past has a
voice. We must triumph over it with truth. Don’t allow your past to freeze you
but rather lead you into the depths of God’s love. Our thinking about the past
can affect us positively by remembering the truth about God’s goodness toward
us in forgiving, delivering and providing for us.
4.
IMAGINATION
Psalms 8:3 “When I
consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which
you have ordained;”
Isaiah 55:8 “My
thoughts are completely different from yours,” says the LORD. “And my ways are
far beyond anything you could imagine.”
God has
given the mind the power to imagine. Some call it dreaming big dreams. Some say
get a “picture” of your future. While others say if you can see it, you can be
it. Imagination sees, creates and thinks outside the box.
In our
imagination heavens thoughts can come to us and be captured. With our
imagination we actually can extend our knowledge to explore the possibilities
we have in God in all areas of our lives. This releases love which is anchored
in faith.”
Wow! These four truths give new significance
to these verses:
“Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to
offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and
proper worship. Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what
God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.” Romans 12:1-2
A renewed mind loves God!
Do you love God with ALL your mind or do you
need to be RE-minded?
No comments:
Post a Comment