My Whole Heart

Deuteronomy 6:5 (KJB), “And thou shalt love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might.”

God wants our whole heart. He won’t be satisfied with anything less. I used to read this verse and think to myself “how do I even do that?” Another issue I used to have is that if I gave my whole heart to God, what would be left for all the others that I love. In my immaturity I was thinking with my natural brain, and not seeing with my spiritual eyes.

First off let me say when we love God first, with all the love we have, our love is so multiplied that there is more than enough to go around for family and friends. In fact we will find ourselves loving strangers, enemies, and many others that the world deems as “unlovable.” As to how to love God with your whole heart, with all our soul (mind, will, and emotions), and all our strength, it is so simple that it can confuse our foolish minds. We have to start by giving God the rule of our lives. We can’t stay on the throne and think somehow we are giving Him all. It’s not by our belief in Him, or our faith. It is by simply allowing Christ to dwell in our hearts and live in us. We have to be truly submitted to His will and His way. There is no room for “self” in this kind of passionate abandon to Jesus.

Andrew Murray, in his book “The Kingdom of God is Within You,” puts it this way, “I do not ask. Are you believers? Are you sure that your sins are pardoned? Are you seeking to live a Christian life? But have you given your heart to Christ to possess, to rule, to renew, to dwelling all alone, to fill with the will of God? Have you given it away, out of your power into His? Your self-confidence, your self-contentment, your self-pleasing, your self-will, has it all been laid at Christ’s feet? So that He can cast it out, and fill the heart with Himself. If not, let nothing keep you back from giving what belongs to God, and what Christ came to win back for Him. Your heart was made for God.”

King David understood it. Even though he didn’t walk perfectly, he did not always do right, God called him a man after His own heart. David writes in Psalm 84:1 (NIV), “My soul yearns, even faints, for the courts of the LORD; my heart and my flesh cry out for the living God.” That is passion for Christ.

Do you have that passion?

Have you completely surrendered your heart?

Won’t you give Him all of your love? Allow Him to work in you and through you, as he did in David.