Love The Lord - The One Year Worship the King Devotional
Love the Lord
Read: Mark 12:28-34
Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.
Mark 12:30
IN WORD Is the Christian life primarily about loving or doing? It’s a tricky question, isn’t it? On the one hand, if we say that love is the priority, we risk blending in with the rest of the world. After all, everyone loves. The objects of love may differ, but the presence of love is nearly universal. If our faith is about love—at least the human type—we’re not very distinguishable from the corrupt world we live in.
On the other hand, if action is the priority, we’re only one step away from becoming card-carrying Pharisees. Nearly every religion is filled with long “to do” lists. There is no end to the activities that spiritually hungry minds can come up with in an effort to get closer to God. The problem is, as we know, that good behavior never made any sinner acceptable to a holy God. It’s never enough.
So how can we love God in an authentically Christian way? When Jesus tells His listeners to love God with everything in them, what does He mean? What does that look like in the life of an ordinary believer? Is it a feeling? an action? an unsolvable mystery?
IN DEED The love we are to have for God is unique among loves. It is comprehensive. It is a radical reorientation of life around what we consider to be ultimately, overwhelmingly valuable. Is it a feeling? It certainly involves our emotions. Is it an action? It certainly involves our behavior. But it is more.
Loving God means doing God’s will because we treasure and value His plans. It means feeling passion for Him because He is worthy of our passions. It means expending all our emotional, spiritual, mental, and physical energy for His sake and not our own. Though we still relate to others and have activities in this world, everything is now in reference to His central role in our lives. As our greatest love, He takes His place at the core of our being.
A man’s spiritual health is exactly proportional to his love for God.
—C. S. LEWIS
