I’m sure we’re all familiar with what Jesus called the “first commandment”, found in Matthew 22:37-38:
“Jesus said to him, " 'You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.' This is the first and great commandment.”
(Matthew 22:37-38 NKJV)
These 27 words of Jesus are perhaps the most weighty and most demanding yet the most inviting and invigorating words ever spoken. In them He gives us the only plausible outlook and only foreseeable future if we desire to live in the highest expression He has for our lives. He calls us to give Him everything. But many believers tend to look at these words as only a commandment and neglect the invitation into the commandment. This call to love God with all of our being is more than Jesus saying “you’d better do this, or else…” With every one of God’s commandments always comes the invitation and enabling power to walk it out.
Stepping into wholeheartedness - the invitation of loving God with all of our being - begins by looking at the way that God loves us wholly and with all of His being. God does not place boundaries around His love nor does He love up to a certain point. The verse we all take for granted – John 3:16 – gives us an amazing glimpse into the Father’s love. He gave His only Son for us! Imagine the tearing His heart experienced when He gave up His only. This act was not a small thing for God. He loves fully, and with that very same love He invites us to love Him and to love others (John 17:26). God has never loved or done anything in fractions, but only in fullness. His all-consuming desire has always been for our everything because He has given us His everything.
When we see that He is not stingy or reserved with His love, we can open our heart wide to begin to love Him with all that we have. We were made to abandon ourselves to Him completely. To only love Him with portions of our heart, soul, mind, and strength is to express ourselves to Him in ways contrary to the nature of love. And it is only in the place of wholeheartedness that we will be kept secure in the face of trials and in the seasons of blessing.
But the invitation to love God in this way is not just something far off at some distant point in the future. When He asks us to love Him fully, He is not demanding immediate maturity but rather a complete response to Him in the here and now. It is not something done or offered once and for all, nor is it just a promise we make to Him at an altar call or during our favorite worship song. Wholeheartedness is to be lived out moment by moment and choice by choice. It is with each step of our journey that we give Him our love through obedience (John 14:15,21), however ordinary, common, or weak it may seem.
Wholeheartedness does not occur somewhere far ahead in the future when we are finally godly and have our lives in order. The enemy uses this lie to keep us from radical love and obedience in the here and now. Loving God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength can and must be done in the context of the difficult, dry, common and mundane moments that we have been given right now.
In each moment of monotony, He has invited us through the doorway to fellowship. There is nothing too small or too trivial to not bring our hearts to Him in love and to consecrate as something done unto Him. When we are cleaning our house, mowing our lawn, going to school, playing with our children, driving in our car, serving at our job, etc., He is deeply and intimately near and familiar.
Lord, help us to live in this place - it is truly the place you've invited us to live in!
