Whole Self In: Loving God with All Our Hearts, Souls, Minds & Strength

Like we talked about last week, The Shema speaks of one, unified God.Hear O Israel, The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. And in the next part of the verse, Jesus invites us to love God with all of ourselves. Not a part. Not a fragment. Not a piece. Not sometimes. Not in between appointments. Love the Lord your God with all of your heart, all of your soul, all of your mind, all of your strength. All. All of you. All the time. This means my heart, my soul, my mind, and body - they’re all meant to work together toward one unified purpose. One me working toward one purpose. Loving one God.

Whole Self In: Loving God with All Our Hearts, Souls, Minds & Strength

One of the biggest struggles we face in our society is that we have so much

freedom that a lot of us don’t know how to choose one option and not

another.  

But what would it look like for us this morning to make some hard choices

about what matters most, even if it meant surrendering good things in our

lives to choose the things that really matter?  

This week, we are starting a new sermon series called “Whole Self In” and

we’ll be spending the next few weeks looking at a passage in Scripture that

Jesus called the Greatest Commandment: The Shema.

Whole Self In: Loving God with All Our Hearts, Souls, Minds & Strength

It's part of a pattern that we can no longer NOT see.  It's the racist

jokes. It's the unwritten prejudice. Most of us are honest, hardworking,

and not racist. But there is an implicit racist bias that inflicts all of

us. The snap-second judgments. The things that we assume about other

people.  

Where is Christ in this? What does progress towards reconciliation look

like?

This morning, we’re continuing our sermon series by taking a look at what it means to experience intimacy in the family of God. A few weeks ago, Pastor Aaron defined intimacy as the desire to know and be known by others, and while I think many of us associate this kind of relationship most explicitly with our immediate families, our text this morning is an invitation to a broader, more holistic understanding of familial intimacy.

Love Out Loud: A Series on Sexuality & Intimacy

For various reasons, celibacy was regarded highly and pursued fervently by the Corinthian Christians. As a result of the glorification of celibacy, some women left marriage and engaged couples hesitated to proceed to marriage, thinking marriage was wrong way to live as Christians. Paul was writing this letter to this church. To the people who glorified celibacy excessively, because their view on celibacy and marriage was built upon the incomplete understanding of the God’s kingdom. To the brothers and sisters in Christ who had the incomplete understanding of the God’s kingdom and, as a result, were over zealous about celibacy for wrong reasons. With the particular context in mind, how does this passage sound to you? What’s Paul saying here?