“He said to them, ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This the greatest and most important command. The second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself. All the Law and the Prophets depend on these two commands.’ ” — Matthew 22:37-40

What do you love? I love God and His Word. I love my husband, my children, my grandson, my dogs, my family, my friends, my church. I love to run. I love walks. I love hiking. I love the outdoors. I love fresh air. I also love the Georgia Bulldogs, baseball, college football, and chocolate. I love the mountains and the ocean. I love books. I love to read. I love to write. I love to study Scripture. I love bubble baths. Yet when I use the word love in each of these scenarios, love doesn’t quite mean the same thing. For I don’t love chocolate the way I love my people. What comes to your mind when you think about the things in your life that you love?

What does love look like? How does it manifest itself in the dailies? To love my family is to spend quality time with them, to know them, to support them, to show up for them, to encourage them, to pray for them. To love Georgia football is to don my UGA gear, place the Bulldawgs collars on my dogs, and cheer loudly on game day as I watch them play. To love running is to be disciplined to run four or five times each week. To love my dogs is to snuggle them, feed them, take them for walks, and provide for their needs. To love to read is to devote time set aside just for that.

We easily toss out the term “love” and assign it to a host of things in our lives, often throwing God and spiritual things right along in there with it. In doing so, have we cheapened what it means to love God? When we love something, we act on it in some way. We are devoted to it. Pause for a moment and reflect on how your life is evidence of the things you love. Love is more than a feeling. Love is not passive.

From the beginning, God instructed His people, the nation of Israel, to love Him wholly and devotedly. In Deuteronomy 6:4-9, we find what is known as the “Shema,” or call to worship. Here’s how it begins: “‘Listen, Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. Love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength.’” And in the Gospels, we also find Jesus saying the exact same thing: love the Lord God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. This is an all-encompassing love. This is an active love, a committed love, a dedicated love, and a love that determines our course of action.

Why is loving God of paramount importance and the top priority? When we love something or someone, it becomes our focal point, our frame of reference, the standard by which we determine what we do, say, watch, think, and where we go. To love God wholeheartedly will set the direction of our daily paths and establish what we do that will have eternal significance. The older I get, the more I earnestly long to do something with my life that will matter in eternity. Less and less do I care what I have that is of temporal value and more and more do I long to attain the eternal things. If I do not love Jesus well in this life, how will I know to love Him well in the next? It is a grave danger to think to live life here for one’s self and only live for God in eternity. In doing this, we will have missed the entire point of it all. Repeatedly throughout the Word of God we are told to love God with all that we are and to love others.

But how? How do we realistically and practically love Jesus in this way? God’s Word also holds this answer for us. To continue from the Shema in the Deuteronomy passage, we are told to keep the words in our hearts, to repeat them to our children, to talk about them when we sit in our houses and walk along the roadway, when we lie and when we rise, to bind them on our hands and as a symbol on our foreheads, and to write them on the doorposts of our homes and upon the city gates (v. 6-9). To love God wholly is to immerse ourselves in His Word, His truth, His presence, and all things pertaining to Him. To set Him before us so that our gaze is fixed upon Him no matter where we go or what we do.

How do we love God with our hearts, souls, and minds? I desperately want to love Jesus with all of me. This longing is etched into my heart because Jesus has loved me so completely throughout every season of my life. He loved me when I was His enemy. He demonstrated this love for me by going to the cross, carrying my sins and shame upon His own innocent body, and paying the penalty of death for my sin. He loved me when I was loving Him with my life. He loved me when I was at my worst, backslidden and in the throes of sin. He loved me when He rescued me from the depths of the pit. He loved me when He redeemed me and forgave me. He loved me when my heart was breaking. He loved me when I was ecstatic and rejoicing. He loved me when I was confused and lost. He loved me when I needed Him to show up. He loved me every step of the broken way of my life, and He loves me still. He has forgiven me more than I could ever imagine or deserve. And I love Him so very much in return. All I long to do is live my life poured out for Him, offering all of who I am to Him, to demonstrate my love for Him. I can only love Him this much because He first loved me so so SO very much. Jesus has been by my side through it all, and He never withdrew His love from me, even when I so egregiously turned my back on Him. His love is immeasurable, and my love for Him is such a meager offering in return. But He will take it. All He wants from us is our hearts.

To love God with our heart and our minds is to set our affections toward Him. My heart desires Jesus and to please Him and to love Him. But as we know, until we reach our heavenly home with Jesus, we will wrestle against our fleshly desires. This is where we choose to die daily to our flesh and to take up our cross and follow Jesus. Crucify our flesh with its desires. We ask Jesus to daily sanctify our hearts. Even when I fail or mess up or place something other than Jesus on the throne of my heart, He is merciful to forgive and will equip me to tear down the idol and place Jesus back in His rightful place.

To love Jesus with our hearts is to place Him at the forefront of our desires and affections. To love God with our minds is to meditate on Him and His Word, to seek His face and His presence, to ask for the mind of Christ, to take captive any thoughts that are not pleasing to Him and make them obedient to Him. Psalm 19:14 is a prayer we can pray that will center us: “May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable to you.” What we think will determine how we act and what we do. Thus, it is vital for us to love God with our minds. For it will become the foundation of our paths. Our words are determined by what we think. We know that from the mouth overflows what exists in the heart. Our minds and our hearts are so intricately linked to one another and directly impact how we live.

The natural result of loving God wholeheartedly is that we will then love others. We cannot truly love others selflessly when we are not loving God first and foremost. The love we receive from God fills our hearts to love Him in return and love others. He has lavished us with His love, so let us then lavish our love back onto Him and into the lives of others around us. Love God. Love others. Love God. Love others. Let it become our anthem on repeat!

How about you? What is one thing you can practically and tangibly do today to love God and to love one another? I am reminded of the woman in Luke 7:36-50. “And a woman in the town who was a sinner found out that Jesus was reclining at the table in the Pharisee’s house. She brought an alabaster jar of perfume and stood behind him at his feet, weeping, and began to wash his feet with her tears. She wiped his feet with her hair, kissing them and anointing them with the perfume.” She lavishly poured out her love onto the feet of Jesus. What she did was scandalous in that time, but Jesus was worth it to her. She cared naught for the opinions and reactions of others. She had been forgiven much and she loved Him that much more for it. I am that woman. That is my testimony. Therefore, I, too, want to throw myself at Jesus’ feet and wash them with worship in response to His unfailing and unending love. How will you love Jesus?