The Evangelist Speaks

by Evangelist Carolyn Griffin

Loving God, our Neighbors, and Ourselves

We recently celebrated Valentine’s Day. We set aside a special day to express our love to our significant others, children, family and friends. Jesus teaches us in Mark 12:30-31 that showing love is not an annual event marked by our calendars, but is a daily practice that all of us as Christians should engage in. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength. This is the first commandment. And the second, like it, is this: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. There is no other commandment greater than these.

Loving God with all of our heart is only possible when we have had a transformation by the renewing of our minds. We must trade in the old stony heart for a heart of flesh. Sin fragments our hearts. The saving grace of Jesus Christ allows us to yield our hearts totally to God so we can love Him and others as He commands us to. 

The soul is the “heart” of personality. Loving God with all our souls means keeping our thoughts on Him, governing our emotions by His character, and allowing our will to line up with God’s Will and His Kingdom interests. Ed Young shares a daily spiritual exercise that he prays using the acronym SELF. S=Surrender. Surrender yourself to God in prayer, acknowledging His Lordship over your whole personality. E=Empty. We must ask God to examine our hearts and help us to empty ourselves of anything that is out of line with His character or that would block our communion with Him. L=Lift. We “lift” praise, worship, adoration and thanksgiving to God. F=Fill. We ask the Lord to fill us with His Holy Spirit. Loving God with all of our soul keeps us from falling into idolatry by worshipping ourselves and our own personalities.  

Proverbs 23:7 says, “As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he. The mind is the “heart” of thought. In order to love God with all of our mind, we must learn to control our thoughts and speculations. We must cast down imaginations, and every high thing that exalted itself against the knowledge of God, and bring into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ. (2 Corinthians 10:5) We must take on the “mind of Christ”, if we are to win this constant battle with our thoughts. As we love God with all of our mind, we will think on the things that are lovely, just, and of good report; things filled with virtue and worthy of praise.  

How do we love God with all of our strength? We give him our all. All of the ability and might that He gives us, we give back to Him. God strengthens us spiritually, physically and emotionally as we spend time studying and obeying His Word, and in communion and fellowship with Him. With His strength, we are able to love others, even those that it is sometimes difficult to love. Next time, we’ll look at loving our neighbors as we love ourselves.