When Jesus was asked to name the most important of all God’s commandments He replied “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength”. (Mark 12:30 NIV) I think there is a typical response from the reader “Oh, yes, we are supposed to love God.” But just a cursory reading does not bring down the weightiness of this command. Individuals, congregations, and even denominations tend to compartmentalize the faith, and do great harm. Jesus was saying we are to love God with our whole being or whole personality. That is to say “all your heart” or all of your emotions and feelings; “all of your soul” or all of your spirituality; “all of your mind” or all of your mental capabilities; “all of your strength” or all of your physical capabilities. Our “person’ is made up of four components, making us a whole person, and each part under the Lord’s control. Otherwise our religion could become in-church feel-good or a in-church other-world experience or a intellectual exercise of Biblical hair-splitting, or a physical do-goodism that ignores the devotional life.
The world doesn’t need spiritual schizophrenia to add to divisive forces. It needs to see and experience wholeness or oneness from the local church. The woman described in Mark 5:28 said if I can touch Jesus I can be made “whole” or commonly expressed “I can put it all together.” So many people describe their lives as being pulled in so many directions. The local church, by living the Greatest Commandment, can point people to a life-unifying experience with Christ. The local church must stop giving off this split-personality appearance. A focus on all four loves consistently will keep us relevant. After all, we want to be “the light of the world.” (Matthew 5:14)
“O God, help me not to hold any part of “me” back from your
control and direction. I want to surrender all that I am to You. Amen”
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