Amelia Church of Christ - Christian Church in Amelia, OH near Cincinnati in Clermont County

Welcome to a brand new series called Love U. This little series is only going to last two weeks, but it couldn’t be more important. In this series, we’re going to talk about the very heart of Christianity. Over the next two weeks, we’re getting to the very core of what our lives should be about as followers of Christ.

Our focus text for this series is found in Mark 12. In these verses, Jesus tells us exactly what this whole faith thing is about. Out of all the commands in the Bible, Jesus tells us which ones are the most important.

Mark 12, starting in verse 28. “One of the teachers of the law came and heard them debating. Noticing that Jesus had given them a good answer, he asked him, "Of all the commandments, which is the most important?"

"The most important one," answered Jesus, "is this: 'Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.'

The second is this: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no commandment greater than these." (Mark 12:28-31, NIV)

In this series, we’re going to spend a couple of weeks exploring the two greatest commands that Jesus gave us. Today we’re going to focus on the greatest commandment, which is the command to love God. Next week, we’ll talk about the second commandment to love others. Let’s pray, and then we’re all going to enroll in Love U.

In Mark 12, Jesus told us that the most important command is, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.” (Mark 12:30, NIV)

We’re going to break the message into two parts today as we explore the most important command in the entire Bible.

First of all, Jesus commands us to, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul.” I know as soon as I say the words “heart” and “soul,” some of you having flashbacks of piano lessons when you were a kid.

But in the Bible, words like “heart” and “soul” refer to the very core of who you are. Your heart and soul refer to your inner being. This is the deepest part of you; this is where decisions are born and dreams are hatched. It is what makes you…you.

And Jesus tells us that, at our core, we are to love God. It is the greatest, most important commandment in Scripture. But it’s also a command that needs some clarification.

In our culture, when someone says, “I love you with all my heart,” we usually think of a very strong emotional connection. It’s a deep feeling.

Our culture usually equates love to a feeling. After all, what did B.J. Thomas teach us? “I, I’m hooked on a feeling. I’m high on believing, that you’re in love with me.”

I’m hooked on a what? A feeling. That’s our culture’s view of love. That’s the theme of every love song you’ve ever heard in your life. When you love someone with all your heart, it means that you just melt into a puddle of goo. You get all squishy inside. It’s just this wonderful emotion. It’s a great and beautiful feeling.

Which explains why so many relationships go down in flames. Because feelings wear off. Emotions don’t last.

Love is not a feeling. Love is a decision of the will. Now, I don’t want to sound totally cold and unfeeling here. There is an emotional aspect to love. That emotional connection is a very cool gift that God gives us. Being with my wife still makes me happy. There is still a certain feeling there after nearly 12 years of marriage. But if our relationship was only based on feelings, we wouldn’t be married anymore. Trust me…if it was all about wonderful feelings, Nicki would have left me a long time ago.

Love is a decision. Truthfully, you can’t fall in love. You can fall into infatuation. You can fall into a wonderful feeling. But love is a decision. You decide to love, regardless of how you feel at the time.

Now, think about that in the context of Jesus’ command to love God with all your heart and all your soul. He’s not just talking about an emotional response to God. Are there some wonderful emotions in your walk with God? I sure hope so. I hope you have mountaintop moments in your relationship with Christ. I definitely do. But those moments don’t last, do they? What happens to your faith when the emotions fade?

The command to love God with all your heart and soul is about your will. It is a decision of the will. It is bending your will to the will of God.

The Bible says in Proverbs 23, “For as [a man] thinks in his heart, so is he.” (Proverbs 23:7, NKJV)

Jesus said to love God with all your heart and all your soul. And the Bible tells us that how you think, not how you feel but how you think in your heart…that is what defines you. The thoughts and decisions of your heart define who you are. Jesus’ command to love God with your heart and soul is a command to align your will with God’s will.

Last Sunday during the Super Bowl, my son, Ryan, climbed up into my lap. He decided to watch the game with me. That was a first. Ryan is four years old and he’s never shown any interest in watching sports up to this point. So I was having a little Dad party on the inside. I didn’t say it out loud, but I kept thinking, “My son likes football! Woo hoo!”

After a few minutes of watching, Ryan looked me at and asked, “Which team do we like, Daddy?” And of course I told him that we liked the Cardinals. I’m raising my son to love Jesus, love his family, and hate the Steelers. Kidding, kidding. They played a great game and I give them credit.

Think about Ryan’s question. “Which team do we like, Daddy?” If I said, “The Cardinals,” then Ryan would cheer for the Cardinals. If I said, “The Steelers,” then Ryan would cheer for Steelers. Ryan had no loyalty to either team, but he does have loyalty to me. He didn’t have any preconceptions about what he was watching. He was going to cheer for whoever I was cheering for. His desire was going to be formed by my desire. His will would be shaped by my will.

When Jesus tells us to love God with all our heart and soul, this is what he’s talking about. Instead of pursuing our own agenda, we seek God’s agenda. Instead of allowing our preferences or our will to set the course of our lives, we climb up in God’s lap and say, “What do you want, Daddy? What would please you? What is your will for my life?”

Listen to what David wrote in Psalm 86. “Teach me your way, O LORD, and I will walk in your truth; give me an undivided heart, that I may fear your name. I will praise you, O Lord my God, with all my heart; I will glorify your name forever. (Psalm 86:11-12, NIV)

To love God with all your heart and with all your soul means that you are singularly focused on pleasing him. Your heart is not divided, but it is unified for one purpose…pleasing God.

If you’re a Burger King Christian who claims to follow Jesus but always wants to “have it your way,” it’s not going to work. If your heart is divided between pleasing Jesus and pleasing yourself, you’re on a dead end street. This prayer that David wrote is one of the most difficult things to pray in all honesty. To honestly tell God, “All I want is what you want. My desires don’t matter. I will bend my will to yours.” But as difficult as it is, it’s the only way to love God with all your heart and soul.

The greatest command in the Bible is to love God. And Jesus said that it begins in your heart, in your soul, in the very core of who you are. Do you love God enough to allow him to have control in your life? Where have you been ignoring his will and pursuing your own desires instead? What part of your life have you not surrendered fully to God? We’re going to continue offering God a gift of love called worship. And as we worship him, listen for his voice. Let him show you what you need to surrender to him. Let him teach you how to love him with all your heart and all your soul.

That song by Rascal Flatts teaches a very real, very Scriptural truth about love.

Love and knowledge are directly connected. The song, Take Me There, is sung from the perspective of a man who wants to know the woman he loves in a deeper way. He wants to know about her first kiss. Her first love. He wants to see her hometown. He wants to drive down the backgrounds the she grew up on. At one point in the song, he asks her the key question when he says, “What made you who you are? Tell me what your story is. I want to know everything about you.”

When you love someone, you want to know them. You always want to know them in a deeper and deeper way. Love isn’t surface-level. It goes below the surface. Love digs deep, wanting to know the other person fully and completely. Love is not content to leave a stone unturned.

Whenever I perform a wedding for couple, I always ask each person about their fiancé in one of our pre-marital sessions. And one question I always ask is about their partner’s flaws. I ask the groom to list the flaws of the bride and vice versa. Now initially, that sounds like a good way to fire up the argument machine. But actually, it’s a good way to measure the depth of their love. Love and knowledge are directly connected. Before I perform their wedding, I want to see that this couple knows each other. Do you know all the strengths and all the weaknesses that are part of this person that you want to marry? Are you fully aware of all their imperfections? Do you know this person inside-and-out, do you know the good, the bad, and the ugly…and do you love them anyway?

That’s love. Love wants to know everything about the other person, even if it’s a negative thing. Love is not content with secrets. Love is about fully knowing the other person.

Jesus said that the greatest command in the entire Bible is the command to love God. Part of that command is to love God with all your mind.

To love God with all your mind means that you are hungry to know him more and more and more. You want to know Him, His Word, and His ways more. You want to know what dreams and desires are at the very core of God’s heart.

In Philippians 1, the Apostle Paul wrote, “And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ…” (Philippians 1:9-10, NIV)

Do you see the connection between love and knowledge? Paul prayed that our love would grow through our knowledge and insight. The more you love God, the more you want to know God. The more you know God, the more you want to love God. The two are inseparable.

One of the core purposes of our church is teaching. We teach the Word of God in a variety of different ways, but all our teaching has one goal in mind…to help people love God more.

That’s the end game goal for us. Every sermon that is preached, every class that is taught, every study that is led, every bit of teaching that we do online through our website and our blogs, everything has this as the end goal…to help people love God more. The more you know God, the more you want to love him. That’s the goal.

But we’ve got to understand that it’s not automatic. Knowing more about God doesn’t automatically equate to loving him. In fact, if our motivation is not right, learning more about God can be a very dangerous thing.

The Bible says, “We know that we all possess knowledge. Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up.” (1 Corinthians 8:1, NIV)

Learning more about God with the wrong attitude is dangerous because it can lead to pride. A lot of Christians seem to equate their spiritual maturity strictly by their knowledge of the Bible. I can quote book, chapter, and verse, so I must be a mature Christian.

Never mind the fact that their attitude stinks. Never mind the fact that they are critical and judgmental. They know the Bible, so they are mature.

Not by a long shot. The whole purpose of knowing God more is to help you to love him more. Knowledge by itself puffs us up. It makes us arrogant. But knowledge coupled with love builds us up.

If all your studying and Bible reading and devotions and all the stuff you do isn’t causing you to love God more, you need to stop. Seriously, you need to stop what you’re doing. You need to get on your face before God and ask him to break your calloused and prideful heart. And until that happens, there is no need to learn more, because all you’re doing is building up your pride. When you recapture the heart that God wants you to have, then you can go back to adding to your knowledge because you’re doing it in love. But knowledge without love is a very dangerous thing.

Jesus is calling us to love God with all of our mind. He is calling us to know God more. To always hunger to know him deeper and deeper. And when you learn about God with a humble, open spirit, it will drive you to love him more and more. It will drive you to the last part of the greatest command in the Bible.

Love the Lord your God with all your strength. This where we get to the most practical application of this command from Jesus. It’s where the noun turns into a verb.

Love compels you to action. If your love for someone doesn’t push you to action, then you don’t truly love them. Love is not passive. It is active.

This past week, Brock had a severe ear infection which meant that he was having a rough time sleeping. He woke up before 5:00 am. Nicki immediately got out of bed to take care of him. I was lying there in bed, thinking. I could get up and take care of him. Nicki has already been up with him in the middle of the night. I could get up and take care of him so she could get some more sleep. Or, I could lay here and go back to sleep myself.

Now, as I’m talking about this today, the right decision seems obvious. Get up. Take care of the baby. Let your wife sleep. It sounds so obvious now. But I’ve gotta tell you that I was really weighing my options that morning. But ultimately, I got up. Not because I wanted to. Every part of my body was screaming, “Stay in bed! Go back to sleep! You know you’re tired! Don’t get up!” But there was one thing that trumped all of those feelings…love. My love for Nicki pushed me to action. To do something that was in her best interests instead of in my own best interests.

I’m not Superhusband by any stretch. I don’t have a red “S” emblazoned on my chest. I make mistakes. I make wrong decisions. But the longer I’m married, the more I am learning that love means doing things for her benefit instead of my own. Love requires action on my part.

When Jesus commands us to love God with all of our strength, it is a call to action. It’s a call to do things for God’s benefit instead of our own. It’s a call to do things that will please God.

In John 14, Jesus said, “If you love me, you will obey what I command.” (John 14:15, NIV)

Jesus equates obedience with love. If we do the things that he commanded us to do, he will interpret that as love. You may have heard the old axiom that love is spelled t-i-m-e. In a very real way, God spells love o-b-e-y.

This is really the true test of our love for God. Are you willing to forgive an enemy because God told you to do it? Will you be generous with your money and resources because you know God values generosity? Will you minister to someone who is struggling because you know it will put a smile on God’s face? Will you serve in ways that you don’t necessarily enjoy because you know it glorifies God?

This is how you know that your love for God is on the rise. You are more and more willing to do things that please him, regardless of how you personally feel about it. Instead of asking, “What am I going to get out of this?” you start asking, “What is God going to get out of this? Will it accomplish his purposes? Will it please him?”

There’s a great story from the life of Mother Teresa. If you know anything about her, you know that she ministered in the most deplorable conditions in India. One day Mother Teresa was tending to the wounds of a leper. A nasty, utterly disgusting job. Someone said to her, "I wouldn't do that for a million dollars." To which Mother Teresa replied, "Neither would I."

That is loving God with all your strength. Doing something where you will get absolutely nothing in return. Doing something simply because you know it pleases him. That is how we love God.

Katharine Hepburn said, “Love has nothing to do with what you are expecting to get - only with what you are expecting to give - which is everything.”

That’s the kind of love that God has for us. He gave everything he had when he died on the cross for us. He love for us was completely self-less, absolutely sacrificial. God is the very definition of love.

And as his people, we are called to love him. To love him with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength. To give everything we have for him. To hold nothing back for ourselves. This is the greatest commandment in Scripture. This is the hallmark of a Christ-follower. To love him with absolutely everything that is in you.

Mike Edmisten

Tags: love, Love U, Mark 12, mind, obedience, will