Love Strong

What is important to us is pretty obvious.  Anyone who knows me well knows that the St Louis Cardinals are important to me.  I am constantly keeping up with the team online (even in the offseason), I enjoy talking with other Cardinal fans about the team, I wear Cardinal paraphernalia, I watch games frequently on television, I go to Busch Stadium to watch games, every once in a while I’ll even try to convince someone else to become a Cardinal fan.  The St Louis Cardinals occupy a lot of my thinking, my interest, my conversations, my time, and my money.  There are not too many areas of my life that the St Louis Cardinals don’t occupy.

It’s pretty simple, whatever occupies our life is what is important to us.  There are an abundance of things that can be important to us.  For some, a specific relationship is important.  For some, money and possessions are important.  For some, video games are important.  These things might be important to us but a question we need to consider is . . . What is the MOST IMPORTANT thing in our lives?

READ:  Mark 12:28-34

LOVING God is the most IMPORTANT way we can use the STRENGTH of our lives!  Strength is the mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual ability to accomplish something.  Although we have little strength compared to God, the most important way we can use the strength we do have is to, “love the Lord (our) God with . . . all our strength”.  Loving God is having a strong desire to relate with Him and be with Him.  Loving and relating with God is to be the top priority in our lives. 1 John 4:19 says, “we love because He first loved us.”  Our strength to love comes from the fact that we have been loved by God.  How are we to love God?

Loving God is something we do with ALL of our strength (Mk. 12:30) – All means all and that’s all that all means.  To give our all means to give 100% and not hold anything back.  A good athlete leaves it all out on the court.  A good student gives all of their attention to a teacher.  Anyone who wants to be a part of the Kingdom of God gives all of their life’s strength to loving the Lord.  Loving God with “all” our strength means that there is no amount of our life’s strength left for anything other than loving God.  Yes and no.  Yes, we use all of our strength to love God.  No, it doesn’t mean we don’t do anything else in life.  Instead now, whatever we do, anything and everything we do in life, no matter what it is, we do as an expression of our love for God.  

Loving God is more than RELIGIOUS RITUAL, it is a RELATIONSHIP (Mk. 12:33) – Loving God through religious ritual is compartmentalizing our relationship with Him into a measurable list of do’s and don’ts.  The scribe who asked Jesus this profound question about the most important commandment agreed that loving God was “much more” important than any ritualistic “burnt offering” or “sacrifice” he could offer to God.  In contrast, we love God through relationship in a few specific ways 1) 1 John 4:21 says, “whoever loves God must also love His brother.”  2) 1 John 5:3 says, “this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments.  And His commandments are not burdensome.”  Obedience and loving others are God’s love language.  If we can do these two things we will fulfill all the commandments of the law (Romans 13:8-10).

CONCLUSION
We make the mistake of thinking that loving the Lord with all of our strength is like going to the gym, putting as much weight on the bar as is possible for us to lift, and maxing out all of our spiritual muscle at one powerful moment.  When in reality, loving the Lord with all of our strength means, putting down the heavy weight and using our spiritual muscle to obediently lift the “weight of life” in everything that we do each and every day with our thoughts, words, and actions.  Jesus said in Matthew 11:28, “come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.  Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.  For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” Loving the Lord with all our strength is not as exhausting as we make it out to be.  It means coming to Christ and letting Him do all the lifting for you!  How much of your life’s strength are you using to love God?