Day 12

“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.”

– Deuteronomy 6:5, Matthew 22:37, Luke 10:27, Mark 12:30

Jesus emphasized loving God as the most important commandment in the Bible. That’s what God wants from us more than anything! God is always looking to win our affections and win our attention. You may think your love for God doesn’t matter that much to Him, being that you’re just one person out of many, but God has an incredibly big heart, and not the unhealthy kind of big heart! For God, it’s always, “The more the merrier!” In fact, God can’t get enough of those that truly love Him back. Genesis 5:24 tells of a man named Enoch who walked and talked with God on a regular basis. Then, one day, God just whisked Enoch away to be with Him for eternity.

Don’t look at “love the Lord thy God” like it’s just some command. Looking at the Word as simply a book of rules and never allowing it to sink into your heart will lead to an empty life, and one that is hardly pleasing to God. The Pharisees made this mistake, as Jesus pointed out to them in Matthew 23:23-28. Their actions appeared righteous to those around them, but their hearts were far from God. They were not in love with Him. They were not “filled unto all the fullness of God,” like in Ephesians 3:19.

“Seek, inquire of the Lord, and crave Him and His strength (His might and inflexibility to temptation); seek and require His face and His presence [continually] evermore.”

– Psalm 105:4 (AMPC)

To truly be in love with God means to literally crave to be with Him and to miss Him when you’ve been away for too long. You crave to hear His precious words of wisdom and the unique insights He wants to speak into your heart. You crave His strength, as Psalm 105 says, recognizing that it is above any strength mankind could amass. It’s not just a spiritual link, but also an emotional attachment to the Almighty, Living Creator of the universe, the One we were always destined to be madly in love with, because He is madly in love with us.

By now you’ve probably experienced what a strong emotional attachment to something or someone can drive you to do. Imagine a drive like that for God’s heart, but multiplied and strengthened by the power of the Holy Spirit inside of you!

Have you fallen in love with God yet?

Pursue your purpose in Him,

Anthony B.