Day 3: Love God with All Your Heart

It's July 21st. I've been 22 for almost a month.

So much stuff has happened. So much GREAT stuff. So let me change my opening statement:

It's July 21st. I've ONLY been 22 for about 22 days.

Craziness. Awesomeness.

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I thought this was a pretty good explanation of heart, soul, mind, and strength, so I'm going to share and elaborate, as is my wont.

Your heart is where you feel. Pretty simple, right? And we all like to "trust our feelings." We like to do things that will makes us "feel good inside." That's great and all, BUT we need to also remember that "The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?" (Jer. 17:9) and "'Are you still so dull?' Jesus asked them. 'Don't you see that whatever enters the mouth goes into the stomach and then out of the body? But the things that come out of the mouth come from the heart, and these make a man "unclean." For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander. These are what make a man "unclean."'" (Matt. 15:16-20a). Something I still work on is trying to not always trust my immediate feelings- with all the different factors that go into a decision, I know that my primary gauge needs to be, "Is this what God wants? Is what is going on pleasing Him or not?" Knowing is half the battle. . . but unfortunately it's the easy half.

Your soul is where you decide. Another way to say this is that our soul is our free-will. Animals may or may not feel emotions like we do, but either way, it is our souls that makes us more than "just another animal." If we say that our soul belongs to God, what we are really saying is that our decisions belong to Him. I don't know why, but that seems like a pretty powerful statement (of course, it doesn't matter if it's not true).

Your mind is where you think. I ascribe to the theory that the mind exists in the spiritual realm (in short, this is why the Holy Spirit and Satan are able to have any power of influence in our lives). Because of that, we need to be careful that we don't give every thought that flashes across our minds an immediate free pass to action. In the same way that we should test our emotions, we also need to test the notions and ideas we have in order to be sure that we are not falling into the trap of fooling ourselves or being deceived.

Your strength is where you physically interact with the world around you. This is pretty simple. Everything we do should be done for His glory. This includes EVERYTHING, from relationships to daily tasks to life-altering moves, from what we say to who we interact with on a regular basis. As Pastor Dan explored on Sunday, do our actions line up with our words?

The process for any action should be then: this is how I feel about it-this is what I'm going to do-this is how I'm going to do it-do it. If we are loving God completely through each of these steps, then we are going along the right track. However, with any multi-step process, it's really easy to get off and mess up the end product.

So. . . how do we prepare to give all our heart?

This chapter makes the point about the brutal honesty in emotion found in the Psalms. What's going on in your life right now? I guarantee there's a Psalm that will sum it up for you, and pretty eloquently. I know I've felt like this recently. There are seven things we can do to be most emotional and honest in our prayer life. We can talk about: our feelings, our weaknesses, His strengths, our fears, our desires, an open admission of our sins, and finally, that which we know to be true (His goodness). We can't serve God if we are hiding our feelings, and we certainly can't get anything accomplished if we are too wrapped up in our own emotional craziness to be focused on everything He has done for us.

Point to Ponder: The path to putting God first starts with the word all.
But it's so hard to let go of EVERYTHING. It feels so good to be in CONTROL. There's NO WAY that things will go wrong as long as I am overseeing it (trust me, I am saying this in complete self-mockery). Oswald Chambers says it best: we need to have "reckless abandon" to Christ. What can we really accomplish with our own power? Not nearly as much as we can with His power, and those things that are His are lasting.

Verse to Remember: Matthew 6:33- "Seek first [God's] kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well."
It's so tempting to think that we can draw out of life everything we think we need, and I feel like every time I try to do that, it does not turn out well for me. On the other side, when I'm lining up with God's way, amazing things happen. It seems like having those two choices, and knowing the results of both, there should never be a reason for me to try doing things on my own. And yet I do. Hurray humanness.

Question to Consider: Do I tell God what I feel, or do I tell him what I think he wants to hear?
I think I am pretty good about being honest with God. That is one advantage to living alone- I am able to do all sorts of crazy things, like talk aloud. And He already knows what is in my heart anyway, so what's the point of trying to hide it?