Scripture

Our verse for today comes from Mark 12:30, ” And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. “

Background

Today is biometric screening day here at my office. What that means is that a couple of nurses will be here to give those who signed up a health assessment. They will measure things like blood pressure, heart rate, height, weight, and waistline. They’ll draw a little blood to ascertain blood sugar levels, cholesterol, and the like. And they will calculate something called a Body Mass Index, which is a health indicator relating your body fat to your height and weight. Now, every one of us who participated in the screening last year is one year older, so the chances are good that our assessment this time will not be identical to what it was last year. Getting older has a way of changing a person. But research has found that there are four strategies to healthy aging: No smoking, moderate drinking, regular exercise, and eating fruits and vegetables daily. Doing any one of these can improve your aging by up to 50%. But the amazing discovery was that following all four of them simultaneously actually increased by 300% the odds of avoiding disabilities and disease.

Application

Jesus boiled the commandments down to two: Love God and love others. But for the first one, He appeared to divide it out into four parts. And because of that, some might say that you can love God with four different parts of your self, like the heart is our beliefs and the mind is our thoughts, and so on. They might even spend time trying to determine their heart from their soul, or their soul from their mind. But that is a futile endeavor. Jesus was not giving instructions on the philosophical components of man and love. He was simply saying that God wants us to love Him fully, with everything that we are about. And that He is great enough to know when we are not doing that. So doing all four doesn’t count for 300% of the love we should have. And ” loving ” Him in just one way, without giving Him your entire life, is not the love that He is looking for. He wants all of you, and that’s all.

Charge

As we seek Him today, consider whether what’s missing in your life is the love that you’re not giving to your Father.