8-2-10
“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind and with all your strength.” (Mk. 12:30) If we are to love the Lord with all our mind we must fill our mind with that which inspires love for God instead of that which diminishes it. What we do with our mind greatly affects our capacity to love. If we fill our mind with the right things, our capacity to love Jesus increases; if we fill our mind with the wrong things, our capacity to love Jesus diminishes.
Paul says in Col. 3:2. to, “set your minds on things above, not on earthly things.” Our mind is an “internal movie screen” that continually shows us pictures and it will never, ever be turned off. We cannot shut down the images in our mind, but we can redirect them. We can replace dark thoughts with new ones. So, we can rewrite the script of the movie in our mind that we continually watch within by reading and meditating on, or praying over God’s Word on a regular basis.
Romans 12:2; “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.” If we want to know and walk in the will of God in or lives and overcome conforming to “the pattern of this world”, we first need to renew our minds. We love God with our mind by taking the time to fill our mind with the Word, so that we come into agreement with the truth about Him. This involves refusing lies about His heart as a tender Father and passionate Bridegroom King, as we take time to meditate on God’s Word.
Next, when we love the Lord with all our strength we love Him with our resources (time, money, talents, reputation, and influence). We express our love for God by using our resources in relationship with the Spirit in a way to grow in love. God cares about the love we show Him when we invest our strength in the five activities in the Sermon on the Mount (Mt. 6:1-18). These five areas express voluntary weakness because we invest our natural strengths into the Spirit’s hands. Jesus describes these five grace-releasing activities that position us to receive more. We serve and give (charitable deeds; giving service and money; 6:1-4, 19-21), pray (6:5-13), bless adversaries (forgive, 6:14-15; 5:44), and fast (6:16-18)
The normal use of our strengths is to increase our personal comfort, wealth, and honor. In other words, by the fasted lifestyle, we bring our natural strengths to God as we trust Him to return our strength back to us in a way that enriches us and transforms us with meekness. However, He does it in His own timing and way. This takes faith that God is watching and that He esteems this as an expression of love.
Our devotional lives are the means of appropriating free grace, not of earning it. In these five areas we position our cold hearts before the fire of God enabling grace so as to receive the Spirit’s empowering.
Blessings,
Gary