All of You: Learning to Love God With Your Whole Self

Scriptures: Mark 12:29-30, Luke 12:6-7

We all have strengths and preferences. We like to show those parts of ourselves to the world. We tend to avoid our weaknesses, hide the parts we don’t like, and never show people what we are ashamed of. 

Even with our spouses and closest friends, it can be tempting to spend mental energy managing our unfortunate tendencies and unwanted qualities. 

Earlier this year, I was talking with my wife, and I spent a long part of our conversation contemplating how honest I wanted to be with her. I wasn’t sure how she would react when I shared my thoughts on the subject we were discussing. Though we’ve been married for sixteen years, those fears still show up inside me. 

However, the good news is that Jesus doesn’t react like we’re afraid everyone else will react. Jesus knows us better than anyone else and loves us more than everyone else. In Luke 12, Jesus taught his disciples that they are worth far more than sparrows. He told them that God numbered the hairs on their head. We are that precious to Him! 

So, if God knows and loves all of us, is it any wonder He wants a relationship with us? When Jesus was asked what the greatest commandment was, He essentially said, “Love God with all of you, and love your neighbor as yourself.” When Jesus mentioned loving God with your heart, soul, mind, and strength, it was obvious that Jesus wanted a holistic relationship with His creation. Contrary to our fears, Jesus doesn’t want us to hold anything back. 

Jesus wants us to love God with our hearts, which include our will, drive, and desires. He wants us to love God with our souls, which include our emotions and feelings. Jesus invites us to love God with our minds, including our intellect, attitude, and temperament. Finally, we’re invited to love God with our strength, including our abilities, powers, and the force of our bodies. 

As we begin this plan today, I encourage you to wrestle with whether you are loving God with part or all of you. Perhaps you grew up being encouraged to embrace part of who you are while rejecting another part of who God made you to be. 

I grew up in an environment that helped me love God with my mind, but I didn’t feel I got as much help with my soul. Reading Scripture, praying, and serving were areas where I felt equipped, but navigating my emotions and tending to my soul were tasks I thought I needed more resources to complete. 

When I think about loving God with all of me, I get uneasy because I feel weak and uncomfortable. Even when we stay focused on what makes us feel strong and comfortable, Jesus’ invitation opens a door in a different direction. 

Here’s an important truth that you may need to know. The level to which you allow God to make you uncomfortable is the level to which you allow God to bring growth in your life. Loving God and loving people may seem simple, but it is not easy. Following Jesus requires all of you and transforms all of you.

In the next four days of this plan, we’ll explore what it means to love God with our hearts, souls, minds, and strength. I look forward to helping you love God with all of you, and we’ll begin with an area where I share my weaknesses and failures.

Scriptures: Matthew 15:10-11, Matthew 15:16-20, Proverbs 4:23, Ezekiel 36:26

“Why did I say that?”

“Why did I do that?”

“How could I do something like that?”

We’ve all had moments where phrases like that circled in our minds. We needed help understanding where those words came from and what motivated our decision. 

Just as we’ve been on the giving end of one of those moments, we’ve also been on the receiving end. We’ve all listened as someone said, “I don’t know what came over me,” “I don’t know where that came from,” or, my favorite, “That’s not who I am.” 

When someone has said those words to me, I’ve tried to gently but firmly counter their logic with a different perspective. Deep down, we know where that came from—our hearts. It was us who did that. What came over us was what was inside of us.

One of Jesus’s most consistent teachings can be summarized as follows: What comes out of us is the best indicator of what’s inside us. In Matthew 15, Jesus spoke very directly about the power of our hearts. Using an analogy of eating, he rejected the idea that we are made unclean by what we eat. Rather, he taught his disciples that they were made unclean by what came out of them, which revealed what was going on inside of them. 

We tend to think we are defiled by our environment, including the people around us, our social media feeds, and the political forces of the day. We even hear influential people tell us that you are what you eat, emphasizing a focus on the external and a tendency to try and control forces outside of ourselves. 

Certainly, there is wickedness, evil, and sin out there. We live in a world where what was once honored is now dishonored, and what once was a source of shame is now a point of pride. It is not easy to walk in Jesus’s way today. 

But even as our world celebrates sin more and more, there is a bigger problem inside us. Within each of us is a heart that defiles us. Jesus did not modify our behavior; He came to transform us completely.

In the Great Commandment, Jesus taught us to love Him with our hearts. If we have a wicked heart, we need to address that problem. Sure, you could double down on your efforts and try harder. But, let’s be honest—if that was going to work, wouldn’t you have made it happen by now? 

You need someone else to do work on your heart. You cannot do heart surgery on yourself. The prophet Ezekiel wrote about God’s work of removing our heart of stone and replacing it with a heart of flesh. 

Jesus urgently warned His disciples not to follow in the way of the Pharisees, who focused on external righteousness. The Pharisees taught that change came from the outside in, while Jesus said that change came from the inside out. 

Loving God with all of you means facing what’s broken and unhealthy inside you. As many have said, what cannot be named cannot be healed. Once you’ve named or identified those places within your heart, you can surrender those to God to heal them.

If this intimidates you, remember what I shared on day 1. God knows all of you and loves all of you. He wants to be in a relationship with all of you. So don’t hold back parts of your heart from Him. 

On the following day of this plan, we will examine how we greet each other can help us love God better.

Scriptures: Matthew 16:24-26, Mark 8:34, John 10:10

I’ve often asked a pointed question when I’m with someone I know well and care about deeply. “How’s your soul?” Now, that’s not a question you can ask flippantly or superficially. I usually follow up with, “I really want to know.” Because I know this world often damages our souls in ways we ignore.

Earlier in this plan, I told you that following Jesus requires and transforms all of you. To love God well, we must include our souls. The Greek word we translate as the soul is “psuche,” which means “soul/life/spirit.” One commentator notes that your soul is “the essence of who we are. The part of us responsible for our highest spiritual exercises. The seat of our emotional activity.” 

While the “heart” relates to the will, the “soul” relates to the emotions. Jesus modeled a healthy approach to our emotions. He expressed his emotions, rather than suppressing them. In John 15, we see Jesus full of joy. In Matthew 23, Jesus gets angry without sinning. In John 2, we see Jesus react with disgust and sorrow in John 11. He has compassion in Matthew 9 and loving concern in John 19. 

To love God with your soul includes loving God with your emotions. After all, God created them, and Jesus expressed them. But the soul is more than just our emotions. The soul is eternal. Jesus warned His followers in Matthew 16 to beware of gaining the world and losing their souls. If we lose our soul, we lose everything! 

We’re tempted to give up the most important part of who we are in exchange for what we think will satisfy us. What are you looking for in your spiritual beliefs? What are you expecting to give you hope, peace, and healing? Our enemy Satan tempts us by saying, “If you do ____________, then you’ll be at peace, be healed, or find hope.” We often experience disillusionment because what we expected to bring peace only brought us pain.

The truth is we need those things Satan offers us – peace, healing, and hope. But there’s an even more profound truth – you won’t find those things through Satan. Your enemy often uses your emotions against you, manipulating you to make decisions purely based on emotions rather than a commitment to Jesus’ way.

Jesus continually invited those who followed Him to deny themselves, take up their crosses, and follow Him. Based upon His expression of emotions, Jesus wasn’t giving us a mandate to eliminate emotions. He was calling us to deny the sinful flesh and the way of Satan, which cost us our souls. Following Jesus and loving God with our souls is the path to true peace. 

Today, I encourage you to ask yourself, “How is my soul doing?” You could get together with a friend and ask each other how your souls are doing. Attending to your soul means paying attention to something significant to Jesus.

Tomorrow, we will move to a different part of ourselves. If we don’t love God with this part of ourselves, we may miss God’s movement in our lives. I know you don’t want to miss God, so I’ll see you then!

Scriptures: Mark 12:14-17, James 1:5, 2 Corinthians 10:5, Philippians 4:6-8

There’s an old story about a Sunday school teacher who shared a riddle with her students. She asked them to raise their hand when they knew the answer to the riddle. 

She said, “This is an animal, and it’s small.” She continued, “It can run up trees. It has a fuzzy tail.” Surprised no one raised their hand, she continued, “It collects nuts for winter. You’ve probably seen them in your backyard.” Perplexed that no one knew the answer, she stared at the children until one child raised his hand. He said, “I know the answer is supposed to be Jesus, but it sure sounds like a squirrel.” 

That story is a bit cheesy, but after having served as a pastor for nearly 20 years, it’s not far from the truth. I’m saddened by the tendency of many people to check their brains at the door when they enter church environments. This tendency stands in stark contrast to Jesus’ words in Mark 12, where He told His disciples to love God with all their minds. 

As I’ve been meditating on Jesus’ invitation to love God with all of us, a thought came to me. There’s a difference between knowledge of God that merely informs you and knowledge of God that transforms you.

Earlier in Mark 12, Jesus encountered some religious leaders trying to trap Him with their questions. The first verbal battle concerned paying taxes to Caesar. In this instance, Jesus offered the famous response, “Give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and give to God what belongs to God.” 

Later, Jesus replies to a verbal trap about marriage and the resurrection by teaching these religious leaders about the character and nature of God, something they should have already known themselves. 

These encounters show us that seeking knowledge of God without alignment with God will cause you to miss God. We can try to love God with our minds and settle for merely accumulating knowledge about God. The religious leaders in Mark 12 knew a lot of facts about God, but they didn’t know God. As a result, they failed to understand God’s character. 

Their problem wasn’t limited to misunderstanding God’s character and not knowing God personally. They also opposed God and His work in the world through Jesus. 

When we love God with our minds, we seek more than information—we seek transformation. By seeking knowledge that leads to intimacy with God, we strive to love God more and become more like God ourselves.

How do we do that? First, we pray daily for wisdom, asking God to align our thinking with His wisdom as James 1 describes. Second, we exchange our anxious thoughts for God’s peace, as Paul described in Philippians 4:6-7. Third, we take thoughts captive and make them obedient to Christ as 2 Corinthians 10 encourages. Fourth, we meditate on life-giving things like Philippians 4:8 outlines. 

Loving God with your mind can be just as exhausting as a long run or a demanding weight-lifting session. But, since God is looking to transform all of us, we cannot check our brains at the door or leave them out regarding how we love God. 

As we wrap up this plan tomorrow, we’ll consider how we’ve overlooked our bodies in our relationship with Jesus. If you struggle to love your body, you’ll enjoy what we’ll explore together!

Scriptures: Genesis 1:27, Psalms 139:13-14, John 1:14, 1 Corinthians 6:19, Ephesians 2:10

Which part of the great commandment is most difficult for you? Loving God with your heart? Soul? Mind? Strength? 

An often overlooked aspect involves loving God with your strength. Those who feel weak may struggle in this area. An even greater struggle may occur for those who hate their body. After all, it’s tough to love God with your body when you don’t see your body the way God does.

Many commentators have debated the meaning of the word “strength.” The Greek word has a wide range of meanings, which many translators render as strength. That range includes our will, might, or force. One way to summarize them is the will of our bodies. Having already included our hearts, souls, and minds, I think it’s important to consider how we include our bodies in loving God, especially as so many struggle with their bodies today. 

Consider these five things that the Bible teaches us about our bodies. 

First, according to Genesis 1:28, your body is made in God’s image. Sin certainly impacted our bodies through Adam’s fall, but that impact does not undo what God does when He makes us in His image. 

Second, your body is something God was intimately involved in creating. In Psalm 139, David writes that God’s works are wonderful – we are God’s handiwork. In the words of author Jess Connolly, “your body is a good body.” 

Third, your body is similar to the body Jesus inhabited. If the body was worthless, then why would Jesus have chosen to become flesh, as John 1:14 tells us? It was Jesus’ body that was beaten, crucified, and resurrected for your salvation. 

Fourth, your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit. In 1 Corinthians 6, Paul asks the believers, “Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God?” We often treat our church buildings with more honor and care than our bodies, where God’s spirit dwells. How much more valuable are our bodies than our buildings? 

Fifth, according to Ephesians 2:10, you are God’s masterpiece. Paul used the word “poema” to describe the people who Jesus’ death saved by grace. The word poemameans “the crowning achievement of an artist.” God’s best piece of creation is not the Grand Canyon, Victoria Falls, or the Great Barrier Reef. God’s masterpiece is you! 

Throughout the Bible, we see people invited to serve God out of what looks like a weakness but is a strength. Moses was sent to speak on behalf of the people despite having a stutter. Gideon was sent to face a massive army in battle despite being a fearful person. Jonah was sent to preach salvation to a group of people he was prejudiced against. 

If it’s hard to love God with all you are—strength, soul, mind, and heart—consider praying, “God, how do You see all of me differently than I do? I want to love You with all of me, but that’s hard if I don’t see myself as You do.” 

While the Great Commandment seems simple—love God with your whole self – I’m sure you’ve realized through this plan that it is far from easy. I am praying for you today to invite God into your struggle and let Him teach you how to hold nothing back in your growing relationship with Him.