Monthly Archives: October 2013

October 4, 2013 · 7:51 AM

Love With Your Strength

And you must love The Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind and all your strength. – Mark 12:30

About a year and a half ago, I was reading Mark Batterson’s book “Primal”. It dealt with this verse as well. When I got to the part about loving God with all your strength, I began to see that I had not been loving Him with my strength. I had loved Him with my heart, my soul and my mind, but I had left out an important part. I had failed to love Him through my actions and abilities. That chapter created the birth of this website.

I had always felt called to write, but never had done anything more than talk about it. I had visions (fantasies) of having never written and somehow I would be granted a book deal. When I read that loving God with my strength meant that I was to use my talents and abilities for Him, I knew I had to start writing. I may never get a book deal and I’m ok with that because I’m doing what He asked me to do. I’m writing in order to love Him with my strength. His approval is more to me than anyone else’s.

Jesus told the Parable of the Talents in Matthew 25:14-30. A man went on a trip and called his servants together. To one he gave five talents to, to another he gave two and to another he gave one. The first two servants went out, used their talents and doubled their worth. The third dug a hole and carefully buried the talent given to him. When the man returned he took account of what they had done with what he had entrusted to them. He partnered with the first two and took away the talent from the third. The attitude of the third is what I want to look at because it’s what I saw in the mirror.

In the Message in verses 24-27 the conversation went almost like I had been with God. The servant said, “Master, I know you have high standards and hate careless… I was afraid I might disappoint you, so I found a good hiding place.” Unfortunately, that was my attitude about what God had given me. I didn’t want to mess up so I just sat on it waiting for the day to come when He asked for it. The master’s response is what motivates me now. He said, “That’s a terrible way to live! It’s criminal to live cautiously like that! If you knew I was after the best, why did you do less than the least?”

When we don’t love God with all our strength, we are doing less than the least. We are putting our pride of how others will critique us over our obedience to what He asked of us. As He put it, that’s a terrible way to live. Each of us have been given an ability to do something for God no matter how great or small. We can’t all be a Mark Batterson, Max Lucado, Billy Graham, Mother Theresa, Chris Tomlin or Darlene Zschech, but we can be who God called us to be. We can love Him with what He gave us instead of burying it because we’re not as good as the best out there.

What talent has God given you and called you to use that you’re sitting on? It’s time for you to dig it up and start investing it in the Kingdom. It’s time to love God with your strength.

6 Comments

Filed under Uncategorized

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

October 3, 2013 · 8:09 AM

Love With Your Mind

And 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 believe most of the battles you and I face are fought in the mind. It’s in our mind that doubts are raised, fears are born and self defeating thoughts dwell. It is a crucial battlefield that many of us fail to admit what’s going on in. We say we’re fine, when really we’re entrenched in a battle for our mind. In order to be victorious in those battles, it is critical that we learn to love God with our mind.

Loving God with our mind is about making the choice to continue to love when our passion fades and our psyche doesn’t feel like it. It’s about remembering those feelings of gracefulness that came along when you were rescued from the gates of hell and have since gone away in the day to day routine of being a Christian. Lamentations 3:21-22 says, “But this I recall and therefore have hope and expectation: it is because of the Lord’s mercy and loving-kindness that we are not consumed.” The writer knew that when his hope was fading, he had to recall where he came from and therefore had hope.

Hope is a hard thing to keep up when you experience physical trials and pray to an invisible God. Doubt comes in and let’s you know the trials are real, but asks, “Where is God in all of this?” If we don’t learn to love God with our minds and have the ability to recall what He’s done, it will be easy to fall in such a situation. I remember when my mom was dying of cancer 15 years ago. One of the days that I went into ICU to visit her a M. D. Anderson in Houston, she could see the worry on my face. She did something that I’ll never forget.

She sat me down and started from when she was a child until that very day and recalled every time that God had met her needs. She told of childhood struggles, her doubts, miracles she had seen God perform for her and our family. For hours she talked to me about it. In the end, she looked at me and said, “Chris, I have peace with what will happen here because I know God has always done what’s best for me.” She loved God with her mind as well as with her passion and psyche. When she was tired from the chemo, when her psyche was worn out from the fight with cancer and her body couldn’t move, she showed me what it meant to love God with her mind.

Her body didn’t survive what cancer had done to it, but her soul did because cancer could not touch her love for God. It was hard not to be angry with God about losing her, but before she passed, my dad sat us down and told us to purpose in our minds that no matter what happened, we wouldn’t get angry with God. We needed to remember He is a good God even when things don’t go the way we want them to. We needed to love Him with our minds instead of losing the battle to anger and doubt.

What about you? How have you learned to love God with your mind when everything else seems to be failing? Maybe you’re struggling with your love for God today as you read this because of circumstances that you don’t understand. Let me encourage you to do what my mom taught me. Go back and recall all that God has done for you, write it down so you can see it and then have hope and expectation as Lamentations put it. Loving God with your mind is hard work, but critical to surviving difficult times.

10 Comments

Filed under Uncategorized

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

October 2, 2013 · 7:52 AM

Love With All Your Soul

And you must love The Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind and all your strength. – Mark 12:30

If loving God with all your heart was about being passionate again in your relationship with Him, then loving Him with all your soul is about loving Him with who you are. I looked up the Greek word “soul” used in this scripture to help give context and the word was “psyche”. It includes your conscious and subconscious self. I believe Jesus was telling us that our love for Him should permeate our entire being. It should be second nature to us.

I’m reminded of the woman who came and wept at Jesus’ feet and then dried them with her hair. People were watching in shock as she did it. They couldn’t believe Jesus was allowing this sinful woman to touch Him. He turned to them in Luke 7: 44-47 and told them that they had not offered him water for His feet nor greeted Him with a kiss. He then made the point that the person who is forgiven most, loves most and whoever has been forgiven little loves little.

When Jesus comes into our lives and forgives us of sins we have committed, it should change who we are and how we love. II Corinthians 5:17 tells us that anyone who belongs to Christ becomes a new person. Our old life is gone and a new life begins. The extent to which we realize what we’ve been saved from is how much we will love God with who we are. If Christ has forgiven us, then He has saved us from the same fate no matter how big or how small our sins were. We should love Him unconditionally based on that, but Jesus made a point to show that the size of our debt has to do with the size of our love.

Many of us have been forgiven for a great deal of sin. Some of us have been forgiven a small amount if sin. Either way, we have all sinned and were condemned to hell. Now that we have been forgiven, how do we express that love with who we are? Have we let that forgiveness come into our psyche and change us as a person? Have we become a new person that is different from the old one? God doesn’t just want our passion, He wants who we are to love Him. He wants our love for Him to emanate from our very being.

Letting His love change our psyche means we have to let go of the past that is tied to our old psyche. You can’t change what you’ve done in the past, but you can let Him forgive you of it and you can forgive yourself for it. When you’ve learned to do that, you will see that who you are will begin to change. You will become more like He is and grow into the person He wants you to become. Let go of the old life today. Embrace the new life He is giving you and love Him with who you are. That’s loving God with all your soul.

Leave a comment

Filed under Uncategorized

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

October 1, 2013 · 7:52 AM

Love With All Your Heart

And you must love The Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind and all your strength. – Mark 12:30

What does it mean to love God with all your heart? We tell others we love them with all of our heart, but what does it really mean when we say that? Have you ever loved someone with half a heart? I don’t think so. Love requires that you go all in. It demands that you give up what you want for the other. I Corinthians 13 tells us all of the great attributes of love. We apply that chapter at weddings to marriage, but what about to our relationship with God?

When you love with your whole heart, you don’t care who knows. There’s a feeling of euphoria that makes you feel like you’re walking in the clouds. You smile for no reason at all. You think about the other person all the time. When is the last time you had those feelings or thoughts about God? It’s a tough question for any of us to answer, especially those of us who have been Christians for a long time. Just like a normal relationship, those feelings of euphoria change and the relationship has to be built on something more than feelings.

When we first believe, we experience those feelings and thoughts, but over time they wane. We have to learn how to keep our relationship with God fresh. We have to put work into it. We have to dedicate time to the relationship to help it grow. If we don’t make our relationship with God a priority in our lives, our feelings of love for Him will go away. God desires quality time with each of us, not just a nod to heaven every now and then. He wants to talk with us and to be our first thought, not our last.

Jesus intentionally lead off the greatest commandment with “Love The Lord your God with all your heart.” He knew that if we could learn to love Him with all of our heart, then the rest would be easier to do. He knew that the heart is the seat of emotion in our lives. It’s what gets us to try when defeat is certain. It’s what gets us to believe when all hope is lost. It’s what makes us pick ourselves up off the floor after we’ve been knocked down and convinces us to get back up again. Loving Him with that kind of heart is what will keep the relationship strong even in the dark times.

If you’re in that place where the feelings of euphoria are gone in your relationship with God and He feels distant, I want to encourage you today to rekindle that fire. The easiest way to do it, is to make time for Him today. Make your relationship with Him a priority. Show Him you mean it by giving up what you want for what He wants. Refocus your attention on what matters for eternity versus what’s temporary. If what you’re doing today has no bearing on eternity, then you’ve lost focus on what really matters. Find a way today to show God you love Him with all your heart.

2 Comments

Filed under Uncategorized

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,