Love is a _____.

Love, such a short little word—but let’s face it, we have such a tremendously difficult time understanding it.  Doing some studying recently I went to the dictionary, as I am often prone to do, and discovered that my dictionary of choice had twenty-eight different definitions for love.  I found all of them to be sorely inadequate.  I want to spend the next few days looking at this wonderful little word.

Rather than just diving straight off into the grandiose theological implications inferred by the word love, let’s just think about a few examples of what our society considers love.  We have holidays based on loving things, relationships, family members, and hobbies.  There are huge corporations designed around the promise of connecting people to love.  In America we tailor our lifestyle, including routines, possessions, wardrobe, religion, and friends to the thing(s) we love.

Waylon Jennings summed it up pretty good, “I’ve been looking for love in all the wrong places.”

Mind

Loving God “with all your mind,” is not nearly as hard a concept to grasp as the previous two sections from Mark 12:30 I have discussed.  Of course, as is so often the case in life, it is perhaps easier said than done.  It is my belief that this kind of mental devotion to God can be boiled down to three basic areas; thought-life, attitude, and intellect.

As fallen beings our thoughts often betray us.  Paul wrote that he had to consciously make his every thought captive to Christ.  He also wrote that he had to renew his mind daily.  In this sense loving God with your entire mind would mean that you seek purity in your thoughts.  With obedience we can control the things we allow our minds to dwell on, however it takes a measure of steadfastness, devotion, and discipline.

Our attitudes are another area where we all-too-often fail to love God with our whole mind.  This point was made so very real to me during my trip to Ecuador this past summer.  In a part of the country that was extremely poor and by all our culture’s indicators should have been depressing and destitute, I met some of the most jovial and upbeat personalities I’ve ever crossed paths with.  Why?  Because their attitudes are rooted in a righteous perspective of who God is, what He has done for them, and a healthy faith in His power and willingness to be sovereign in their day-to-day lives.  In stark contrast I’ve known many people within our borders who would claim Christian status and yet do not at all display the upbeat contentment that I found among my Ecuadorian brethren.

Intellect is the last part of our mind that I believe we should turn over fully to the King.  To be blunt, many Christians are dumb.  There are probably numerous reasons for this but the most glaring reasons I have encountered for this are laziness and apathy.  Many believers today have an extremely poor knowledge of the basic principles of their faith and many more are just too apathetic to think that they should honor God by furthering their intellect.

In loving God with our entire mind I believe that we will develop a better sense of how to serve Him through a healthy thought-life, a contagious attitude, and a robust intellect.  This is perhaps one of the most neglected aspects of the Christian faith.

Heart

“With all your heart,” those words carry a great depth of meaning, but as concerns the passage from Mark 12:30 it is easy enough to grasp the nature of what Jesus was speaking of—even if the actual living it out part is not so easy.  It is my belief that when Jesus told his listeners to love God with all their heart he was essentially speaking of their desires, desires for God and Godliness.

He was instructing them that to truly love God with every aspect of their heart it must come from a place of willingness.  And from the willingness and desire for God they would see a resulting change in character and compassion, passions and discipline.

I heard it said once that salvation was the process of changing our “want to”.  It seems to me that loving God with all your heart has to come from that place inside us all.  It is neither something that will happen by accident, nor can it be forced upon us.  Rather it is the willing act of changing our desires.

Basically Jesus was saying, “want God.”