Known and Loved

Webster's dictionary defines the soul as the spiritual part of us. The soul is our deeply felt moral and emotional being. These characteristics are only present in rational beings- that would mean human beings. It is our soul that embodies the deepest part of us and it drives our search for meaning and purpose in this world. So what does it mean to love the Lord our God with all of our soul?

What does it mean to love the Lord our God with all our mind? How does our thinking about God shape who we are and how we relate to the world? We started answering these questions last episode as part of our series on the Greatest Commandment: Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your MIND and all your strength, and love your neighbor as yourself. Today we go deeper into this aspect of loving God with all our mind by examining three different worldviews that shape who we are and how we think about God. How we think about God will shape how we love Him and each other.

What is the purpose of the mind in our faith? How does what we think about God shape who we are? The Greatest Commandment says to Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your MIND and all your strength. There is an important aspect to our loving God and others, that is more than just an emotional rush.  Real love is deliberate. It is purposeful. It is thoughtful and it takes action.  Paul tells us in Colossians to “Set your MINDS on things above, not on earthly things.” That means an active portion of our loving God is engaged in thinking and setting our minds on God and the things of God.

What is love? What does it mean to love? What does it mean to love God with all our hearts? In today’s episode we are beginning in earnest our examination of the Greatest Commandment: Love the Lord your God with all your HEART, all your soul, all your mind and all your strength, and love your neighbor as yourself. Love is by definition relational which means that love is not just an emotion describing how we feel. LOVE is a verb- an action word! When we Love God with all our heart then our love in action will look like God's love in action- patient, humble, selfless, persevering and sacrificial.

In this next series of Known and Loved we are going to explore Jesus’ greatest commandment aiming to understand what it means to love the Lord our God with all our heart, mind, soul and strength and to love others as we love ourselves. We will also be trying to understand that this God of ours is EPIC and multidimensional- That’s why we do need to love him and each other with all of these facets of our being. 

Spiritual disciplines don’t exist to restrict us, they exist to free us. We enter in them confined and then emerge on the other side finding life and open spaces. We close this series by looking at tips for how to be successful in motivating our hearts to embrace a Secret Life with God, understanding this is how we build intimacy with the God of the universe who knows and loves us. This is how we become conformed to His likeness, and whatever He asks of us is nothing that He has not already done for us.

How do we motivate ourselves to engage in Spiritual disciplines? In our last episode we said we need to make two important perspective shifts. The first, which we covered in Episode 35 is: The Bible is not about you! The Bible is about God and what he has done for you. Today we are going to look at perspective shift #2: Quality Time. Spiritual Disciplines of praying, fasting and giving in secret are all opportunities for spending QUALITY time with Jesus. Because You can never get enough of Jesus and Jesus can never get enough of you! Jesus is the Answer! Jesus is always the answer!

Spiritual disciplines are often duties before they become delights. If you only practice spiritual disciplines for immediate gratification then you’ll stop doing them. Spiritual disciplines require just that: discipline and delayed gratification. We have to press through this because when we practice these spiritual disciplines we are creating spiritual deposits of God’s resources that we need to navigate life well.

In order to motivate our hearts toward these spiritual disciplines we need two perspective changes about our time in the word & spiritual disciplines. 

Today we focus on The First perspective shift: The Bible is not about you. It is about what God has done for you.

We have to confront the reality that when Jesus was born the spiritual realm was thrust into a great battle in the ongoing war between God and Satan. When Jesus came into the world, Spiritual warfare was at a pique. Yes, peace is coming, but peace has a cost—that cost is paid in battle! The birth of Christ was far more like God’s D-day invasion than an olive branch extended on a silent night. 

Listen to all the way to the end for a special announcement!!

Teaching Fearless: Monica Gill’s Mission in a Culture of Compromise (Apple)

Teaching Fearless: Monica Gill’s Mission in a Culture of Compromise (Spotify)

Did you realize that whenever you pray, you are acting as an Agent of Rebellion? The Christian worldview sees the world as enemy occupied territory. As you pray you come to realize that you are in the heart of that enemy occupied territory and you are part of the rebellion to take back the kingdom. You are a member of “the resistance” much like the French or Dutch underground against the Nazi’s in World War II. Understand that when you pray you are in a state of rebellion against the brokenness of this world acting as God’s Secret Agent in the resistance!