You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. – Deuteronomy 6:5
All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten was a New York Times bestseller more than thirty years ago. In it, author Robert Fulghum shows how insights on life can often be found in ordinary circumstances. He finds life lessons in a pile of unwashed clothes in the laundry room, in a box of broken crayons, and in playing the childhood game of hide and seek. The subtitle of his book is Uncommon Thoughts on Common Things.
Childhood also comes with its rules: play nice, wipe your feet, finish your milk, don’t take things that aren’t yours. It is basic, but it stays with you as you mature and go out into the world. Pastor Roddy Chestnut, author of the “Life in the Kingdom” series, asks how you learned your childhood rules. They were not by instinct. No, he says, but “by learning over and over again and by seeing it modeled in front of us by people we looked up to,” be they teacher, parent, or other influence. How did you learn about loving God? Probably by the same means, plus the adult addition of study and prayer. How good are you at loving Him with everything you have? Theologian Mark McIntosh said, “God should be loved supremely, exclusively, and earnestly.” In My Utmost for His Highest, Oswald Chambers declared, “Holding nothing back! Do you love God this way?”
“Bless the Lord, O my soul. And all that is within me, bless His holy name,” David wrote in Psalm 103. How does the Christian love God? Jesus said, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments” (John 14:15). And, He said, you must also love your neighbor as yourself (Luke 10:27). In loving the Lord, the believer is to imitate Him (Ephesians 5:1), walking in love, forgiving others, showing compassion, being thankful, and serving others. Paul urges, “Let all that you do be done in love” (1 Corinthians 16:14). Pray for followers of Christ across the United States, including those who are leaders in government, to practice this basic rule of life to love God above everything so that He is ultimately glorified.
Today’s Verse: Deuteronomy 6:5
You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.
All Scripture quotations and audio are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Recommended for further reading: Deuteronomy 6:1-9
“Now this is the commandment—the statutes and the rules—that the Lord your God commanded me to teach you, that you may do them in the land to which you are going over, to possess it, 2 that you may fear the Lord your God, you and your son and your son’s son, by keeping all his statutes and his commandments, which I command you, all the days of your life, and that your days may be long. 3 Hear therefore, O Israel, and be careful to do them, that it may go well with you, and that you may multiply greatly, as the Lord, the God of your fathers, has promised you, in a land flowing with milk and honey.
4 “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. 5 You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. 6 And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. 7 You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. 8 You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. 9 You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.
All Scripture quotations and audio are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
