With All Your Heart

With All Your Heart

You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength. –Mark 12:30

“I just want to be friends.” Ugh. This is the phrase every hopeful lover dreads hearing from the object of his or her affection when stepping out onto the risky relational ledge of declaring feelings and desires. God, too, has taken this relational risk, declaring openly his love for you. “I have loved you, my people, with an everlasting love,” he says (Jeremiah 31:3). He has made the first move, and what he wants is for you to love him in return. You see, God is not interested in being just a casual acquaintance. His desire is for a vibrant romance. Since the day God created Adam and Eve, placed them in the Garden, and walked with them there, he has been pursuing us to lavish his love on us and to be loved by us. God wants to fill your soul, capture your heart, and captivate your mind in a sacred romance.

Why does God want us to love him in such an all-consuming way? Is he desperate or needy? Of course not. Acts 17:25 tells us that “he has no needs. He himself gives life and breath to everything, and he satisfies every need there is.” We are the ones who are desperate and needy. Loving God is what we were created for. He knows our hearts will never be satisfied until they are captured by him and committed to him.

God is looking for a love affair with you. He doesn’t want you to exert all your energies following a moral code or figuring out doctrinal difficulties. He wants your heart. He wants you to invest every part of yourself not in serving him but in loving him. He wants to save you from becoming like the empty, unhappy people described in Isaiah 29: “These people say they are mine. They honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far away” (verse 13).

Extreme difficulties are like a jolt to our complacent hearts. They awaken our minds and emotions toward God. Can you see he is offering himself to you in the midst of your hurt, wanting an ever deeper intimacy with you? Will you let God love you? Will you love him in return with strong emotions, focused thoughts, a submissive will, and abundant energy?

My divine Lover, I no longer want to tolerate the distance between us or settle for a relationship devoid of passion and intensity. I want to love you with everything in me, with the essence of who I am.

DIGGING DEEPER