One and Only

[This post is part of a series...click HERE to start at the beginning.]

So what is it, really, that keeps me from loving Jesus with my whole heart?  What robs my attention from Him?  What pulls on my time and my energy?  What would whole-hearted devotion look like and how does that look different from where I live?

I think that when I truly love Jesus with my whole heart His great name is the first to roll off my tongue when I wake up and the last one when I go to bed at night.  Pleasing Him is the benchmark for everything I do.   He is the first one I run to with a funny story or a question or a concern or an issue.

But truthfully, I more often run to Google first.  Having the knowledge of the world at my fingertips is a little intoxicating to an information junkie.  Somehow, I think the Creator of all the universes we could ever hope to discover has the answer to any question I could possibly imagine.  And so much more.

When I am tempted to stop anywhere else first, I need to remember WHO it is that I'm yearning to get home to. HE is the One who loved me first, HE is the One who loves me most, HE is the One who loves me best, and HE is the One who deserves my whole-hearted devotion.

Natalie Grant sings the most beautiful song about the One and Only - why wouldn't I love Him with everything I have and am and hope for?

Lost are saved; find their way; at the sound of Your great name 
All condemned; feel no shame, at the sound of Your great name 
Every fear; has no place; at the sound of Your great name 
The enemy; he has to leave; at the sound of Your great name 

Jesus, Worthy is the Lamb that was slain for us, Son of God and Man 
You are high and lifted up; and all the world will praise Your great name 

All the weak; find their strength; at the sound of Your great name 
Hungry souls; receive grace; at the sound of Your great name 
The fatherless; they find their rest; at the sound of Your great name 
Sick are healed; and the dead are raised; at the sound of Your great name 

Jesus, Worthy is the Lamb that was slain for us, Son of God and Man 
You are high and lifted up; and all the world will praise Your great name 

Redeemer, My Healer, Lord Almighty 
My Savior, Defender, You are My King 

Jesus, Worthy is the Lamb that was slain for us, Son of God and Man 
You are high and lifted up; and all the world will praise Your great name

Yes! Yes!

There are certain prayers we pray that are guaranteed to be answered.  Others...not so much.  Let's take a little quiz.  Which prayer might God be inclined to answer and which one might He ignore?

• "Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us."
• "Oh Lord, would you buy me a Mercedes Benz?"

We set ourselves up for disappointment and failure when we pray out of the will of God.  On the other hand, we set ourselves up for success and a joy-filled life when we offer up the kinds of prayers that make God smile.  This is a pretty easy concept for any parent to understand.  Which request from one of my children would I be more inclined to smile about?

• "Mom, I need you to take me to the mall.  And I need money for the movie, food, and those jeans I've been wanting."
• "Mom, after all you've done for me today, how about you sit down with a cup of tea and let me do the dishes?"

Well, it COULD happen...

In the course of pondering Mark 12:30 ("Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all you strength."), I came upon a fascinating verse that gives us a clue how to begin this process:

"The Lord will circumcise your hearts and the hearts of your descendants, so that you may love Him with all your heart and all your soul, and live." (Deuteronomy 30:6)

This verse shows up about twenty chapters after one similar to it:

"Circumcise your hearts, therefore, and do not be stiff-necked any longer." (Deuteronomy 10:16)

One verse says God will do the circumcising while the other one tells us to do it ourselves.  Rather than get hung up on any imagined contradictions, I choose to interpret it as a both/and, rather than an either/or.  Both are important.  When we see something that needs to be dealt with in our lives, we need to act on it immediately.  When we don't, a covering begins to encase our heart and we become harder and harder to the things of God.  At the same time, we need God to do the heavy work, and we need to cooperate with His work in our life.

I am praying everyday that God would circumcise my heart - that He would cut away whatever stands in the way of my complete love for him - the "with all your heart" kind of love.  I believe this is the kind of prayer that God is dying to answer, and as I pray it with all my heart, He will carve away at anything that stands between me and His perfect will for my life.

Heartectomy

There is nothing wishy-washy about loving God whole-heartedly.  It is, without a doubt, an all or nothing proposition.  I have found myself more than once going through the motions, doing the *right* things (reading the Bible regularly, being involved in ministry, etc.) but lacking the passionate love for Jesus that He articulated as the first, foremost and really, the only thing He wants from me.  Like the Ephesians who were addressed by John in Revelation 2, I am guilty.

 ¹ “To the angel^[a] of the church in Ephesus write:

   These are the words of him who holds the seven stars in his right hand and walks among the seven golden lampstands. ² I know your deeds, your hard work and your perseverance. I know that you cannot tolerate wicked people, that you have tested those who claim to be apostles but are not, and have found them false. ³ You have persevered and have endured hardships for my name, and have not grown weary.

   ⁴ Yet I hold this against you: You have forsaken the love you had at first. ⁵ Consider how far you have fallen! Repent and do the things you did at first. If you do not repent, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place.

What is the only acceptable response to this dilemma?  "Repent and do the things you did at first."  Look back and remember the love that burned within your heart, repent for growing cold, return to Me...this is what God says to me when I find myself having forgotten how to love Him with all that I am.


Moses, in Deuteronomy 30, gets REALLY serious as he expounds on an earlier admonition to "circumcise your hearts, therefore, and do not be stiff-necked any longer" (Deut. 10:16).  This is the way, he says, to be a fully devoted God-follower - by allowing HIM to do the heavy lifting, whatever it takes to bring us to the place we need to be:

 ⁶ The LORD your God will circumcise your hearts and the hearts of your descendants, so that you may love him with all your heart and with all your soul, and live.


Surgery is what is required...a removal of the covering I allow to grow over my heart.  Only when it is cut away can I love Him with all my heart.  Something stands in the way.  It comes between me and the God who demonstrated His love for me in the most unimaginable way - by giving Himself on my behalf that I might be made right before a Holy God.  God is the surgeon and I place myself in His hands, trusting Him to cut as deep as He needs to in order to get rid of whatever it is that holds me back...so that [I] may love him with all [my] heart and with all [my] soul and live.

With All My Heart

I don't think this greatest-commandment-verse is written in any old random order - I think it is very intentional.

 "Love the Lord your God with all your (1) heart, with all your (2) soul, with all your (3) mind, and with all your (4) strength." --Mark 12:30


It's not a coincidence, it's very much on purpose.

Jesus, quoting from the Old Testament, tells us how to love, and by the way, this concept of loving God with our whole being is found in Deuteronomy no less than thirteen times.  The book of Deuteronomy is one long sermon given by Moses to help prepare the Israelites for their new life in the Promised Land.  What is the repeating theme, over and over again?  Love the Lord your God with all you heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.


This command (the only command we need) starts with, first off, love the Lord your God with all your heart.  We consider ourselves rational thinkers, and when we stop to consider the order of how one should love God, I bet we'll jump  first to love the Lord your God with all your mind every time.  When our minds are informed with the truth, when we have all the facts, when we have settled all the arguments, then, and only then, are we ready to love God.  I know this is the way I was taught.  I remember an illustration about a train.  It only ran when it was powered by fact, which was fueled by faith.  Feeling came last, and was definitely not to be trusted,  There was a general reaction to the Jesus movement by conservative Christianity that a faith fueled by emotion was shallow at best, if it could be called faith at all.  I think the Jesus movement grabbed people by the heart - which is exactly the place to begin loving Jesus.  When the facts come first, it is all too easy to forget how to love with all our hearts.

Loving God with all our mind is number three on the list, not number one.

How on earth do I go about loving God with all my heart?  What does that even mean?  I understand it in a limited way because I've been married to the same man for the past 36 years, and I think I can honestly say I love him with my whole heart.  My heart is fully his, and it belongs to no one else.  In fact, I can't even imagine sharing it with another man.  During the past three years Flyboy has survived two encounters with cancer and a mega-virus that landed him in the hospital for a week.  We have had more than one conversation about the what-ifs and Flyboy has said out loud that if he precedes me in death I should remarry.  I can't even begin to conceive of such a thing.  He is the only man for me and I have no room in my heart for anyone else.

Which just barely scratches the surface of what loving God with our whole heart might look like...

It's About Love

It has always struck me as interesting that in Jesus' final prayer before His arrest (John 17), the one thing that He prayed for us was NOT the thing you might expect.  He did not pray for our theological purity.  He did not pray for victory over sin, and while He wants our obedience, He did not even pray for that.  He prayed that we  (believers) would be "one" as He and the Father are one so that the world might experience firsthand the love that He and the Father share.

It always, always, always boils down to love.  

Paul said (I Corinthinans 13) that we can get it all right - we can say the right things, we can believe the right things, we can do the right things - but if we don't have love, it's all just a waste of time.  And when the  Sadducees and Pharisees, stumped by His command of the Scripture asked Him which was the greatest commandment in the Law, Jesus simply replied, "Love the Lord your God with all you heart and with all your soul and with all your mind" (Matthew 22:37).  

When life gets a little toxic and when we get hung up on what we do instead of Who we do it for, love is the place to go.  

I'm getting on the love train.  I want to really unpack the idea of loving God with every fiber of who I am...what it looks like, how it plays out in my life, and how it changes my outlook on everything.  It's about love, pure and simple.  When everything else is stripped away, love is the final answer.

The Answer is Right There...Somewhere

We're taught from our baby Christian days on that Bible study and prayer are the keys to a successful relationship with Christ.  I'm not here to dispute that notion, but my experience has shown me it's a little more complicated than that.  I don't think it's supposed to be complicated - Jesus was the one who said his yoke is easy and his burden is light.  I think that like the rabbis of old who took the fairly straightforward law and turned it into something far more complicated, we are guilty of the same crime: taking the simple Gospel and muddying it up with self-help books cleverly disguised as something spiritual...with opinions and interpretations and ideas about what the Bible REALLY means.  Why would I call them "self-help" books?  Because, as Flyboy preached this morning, we don't get better by trying harder - we get better, or become fruit-bearers (thus fulfilling our purpose), by clinging to the vine.  Books and more books are written with the latest and greatest answer to the question, "how is the Christian life meant to be lived?"  If you just pray this prayer, if you just read the Bible in a year, if you follow these steps...whatever the flavor of the day prescribes...you can live the life God called you to live.

I remember a certain discipleship program I participated in many years ago.  One of the boxes to check was a quiet time 14 days in a row.  If you missed one day, you had to start counting all over again, and you couldn't move on until you completed the task of 14 quiet times in a row.  I walked away from that exercise with two feelings.  One, I did sense a genuine gratitude for the push to develop that kind of a habit, having been to that point unsuccessful.  But second, I felt little empty, like I had not really gotten any farther in knowing or loving God...I'd just checked off a box and could now graduate to the next book.

So what is the answer?  More Bible study?  More prayer?   There was a little song we sang with our kids when they were little: "Obedience is the very best way to show that you believe, doing exactly as the Lord commands, doing it happily."  Besides Bible study and prayer, this is another common answer for how to get it together as a Christian - be obedient.  I think I try to be obedient.  I'm certainly not trying to be disobedient.  What's missing?

I've been pondering this a lot lately, and I think that the way to peace with God is even easier than the four steps Billy Graham incorporated into a little tract in the 60s.  It's certainly easier than a lifetime of willing oneself to be more obedient while trying to discover the right combination of doing my part and allowing God to do His.  It's not meant to be hard or complicated or something where a cipher code has to be broken in order to figure it out.  We are the goofy ones that make it so much harder than it really is.

I think the answer is so close I can smell it.

Beginnings

Maybe it's just me.  Maybe I'm the only one.  I made a profession of faith in Christ at the age of five, when after telling my mother I wanted to take communion like the big people was followed by a conversation with the pastor,  I learned that taking communion had to be proceeded by becoming a member of the church (yes this was possible at the age of five in a Southern Baptist church), which had to be proceeded by being baptized, which had to be proceeded by proclaiming faith in Christ.  And yes, I know that was a very long sentence because for a five year old, it was a very long way from the question, "can I take the Lord's Supper?" to "yes, you can.  You have been validated and credentialed."  When the pastor asked if I believed in Jesus, I responded, "of course I believe in Jesus.  And I believe in Peter and John and all those other guys, too."  And a week later I was baptized, and on the next Lord's Supper Sunday, I took communion with the big people.

So, with such an auspicious beginning in the Christian faith, one might figure it would be smooth sailing from there.

Not so much, but maybe it's just me.

When I was thirteen, I attended a youth retreat at Falls Creek, a Southern Baptist camp in the Arbuckle Mountains of southern Oklahoma.  At the end of our second night there, the pastor instructed us to go out on the hillside under the stars, be quiet and listen to what God might say.  I felt the presence of God strongly that night, as if He were audibly saying He had given His life for ME.  I was moved, and felt that my earlier proclaimed faith was slowly moving from my head to my heart.

Sometimes the difference between your head to your heart feels a whole lot farther than twelve inches.  And travelling that twelve inches is taking a lifetime.  Sometimes I wonder if I'll ever really get there, or if understanding what faith is really all about doesn't happen until we see Jesus face to face.  I'm 55 years old and sometimes I get really frustrated with myself for not being farther along in this journey than I am.  It's not for a lack of trying.  I've read all the latest and greatest books through the years from The Prayer of Jabez to In His Steps (the basis for the What Would Jesus Do movement) to The Purpose Driven Life and a number of the classics, like Hannah Whitall Smith and St. Augustine and Oswald Chambers.  I've studied the prayer lives of George Mueller and Brother Lawrence, taken classes in everything from apologetics to evangelism,  done countless Bible studies and Bible reading plans and yet there are things in my life that elude me.  Like how to lose 35 stinking pounds.  Or how to be the light of Christ in a black world without getting lost in the dark.  Or how to really find joy in the midst of trials.

Like Vizzini, who said the only way to regroup is by going back to the beginning (name that movie), that's where I'm headed.  We trivialize the profound and make the simple far, far too difficult.  Someone once said that the Gospel is simple enough for a child to wade in but deep enough for a champion swimmer to drown in.  I think I'm treading water somewhere in between.  It's not a matter of doubt or unbelief, but just needing to go back to the beginning to remember what is really the most important.

If I wind up just talking to myself here, that's fine.  But if you can relate, please chime in. I'm guessing I'm not the only one.