Love God

 

When Jesus was asked what the most important commandment was, he responded, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind" Matthew 22:37. He was actually quoting part of the Shema, Deuteronomy 6:4-9, which is a famous passage memorized by and quoted by Jewish people throughout the ages. God puts loving Him above every other duty, including loving others. Jesus is helping us to know what is important, but I believe we should also understand why loving God should be the foundational principle upon which we build our lives. In our world we have lots of other people and things vying for our attention and love, such as our spouse, our children, our sports, our careers, our community, our political party, our hobbies, and our physical desires. 

Now most of these things are good, and during regular times of life, some of them can even appear to provide our lives with enough to satisfy us. A great relationship with a spouse can provide deep joy and contentment. A ball team practicing hard and playing as a unit with a singular focus can be inspiring not only to those playing but the fans who follow them. Watching your children grow, accomplish new things, and then being released to become independent adults can alternate between exhilarating and terrifying (we are release another to college this year!). Finding a social cause to improve the world can bring incredible passion and meaning to our lives. 

But as good as all of these things can be, they are insecure as a foundation upon which to build our lives. A great marriage can be taken away in a car wreck, a heart attack, or an emotional and spiritual crisis of your partner. You can do everything right, and they can still be taken away. Ball teams eventually break up and our bodies age to the point where we simply cannot do what we used to be able to do. Kids do become independent and sometimes go exactly the opposite way we had hoped for them. Careers become drudgery, politics disappoint, hobbies become obsessions, desires become addictions, and social causes fail to create the promised utopia. Everything in the universe including ourselves is temporal and fleeting.

God created all of these things including us, and He wants what is best for us. He wants our lives to have a purpose that outlasts the world, and that can only happen if we love the eternal God. Loving God first, helps us to order correctly all the other loves of our life. We can freely love our spouse and not cling to them expecting them to fulfill our every need. We can love our kids and release them to God's good care, understanding that He loves them more than we do. We can work for God's glory and give Him the credit for successes. We can play sports with passion while caring more about our own teammates and our opponents than the accolades that come with winning. Hobbies can be fun but not consuming. Desires can be enjoyed inside of boundaries that bring thanks to God for His goodness instead of regret because we have over indulged.

Do you love God more than all these other loves? How would you know? Christians should regularly examine our hearts to see if our love of God has grown cold and if other loves have begun to take priority. You can spend time building up your love of God in worship, prayer, Christian fellowship, reading the Bible, and by serving others. If you love God with all of heart, soul, and mind, then you will experience His unbelievable love for you, and you will learn to love the rest of His creation with that same kind of love.