Mar 12:30 And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment.

I am a basic, fairly logical person. I want to get to the root of things, the bottom line. As I was reading this verse a few weeks ago, I thought about how "bottom line" Jesus said it. So I began to meditate on this passage and ask myself if I'm loving the Lord with all my heart, soul, and mind. Did I even know what that meant?

How can I love the Lord with all my heart? We use this term loosely and without much thought. I believe God is asking us to love him with all our passion, all our feelings. There's things I'm pretty passionate about, my family (obviously), missions, politics, history, coffee.... Most of these things, just thinking about it, can bring me to great joy, anger, or tears. It's easy for me to get emotional and passionate about these things because I care about them so much. I've invested time, energy, and money into them. I think God is saying for us to love Him with all our emotions, our feelings, our passion. That will require time, energy, and frankly, money. (Mat 6:21 For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.) Honestly, loving God with all our heart might be the easiest one for us ladies since we tend to be more emotional creatures by design. That leads to the next one.

How can I love the Lord with all my soul? This one is a bit harder to pin down. I asked my husband to help me with this and the best way we came to explain it is our soul is our core, our ground, what we live for. Why do I do what I do day after day? Why do I clean the house, do laundry, go on vacation, go to church? What is the bigger purpose? For example; we christians are supposed to do everything differently because we are different, we are set apart.The reason to go on vacation shouldn't be just about relaxing to please our flesh and see the world, it should be because we need refreshment and rest in our bodies and spirits to serve the Lord more. (This would help us in how we vacation as well) Or why do I clean? It should be so I can be a good testimony for Christ, or be able to be more organized so I am more proficient with my time, not so I can be proud to show off all my "things" to others. I think sometimes I tire of serving the Lord from day to day because I have left off loving Him with all my soul. I have forgotten the purpose, the reason I live. Ask yourself, why do I live?

This one might be the most ignored one. How can I love the Lord with all my mind? A few years ago I got some chickens. I wanted fresh eggs and chickens produce eggs, so why not. I didn't know anything about chickens. As I started caring for them I realized how little I knew so I began to read articles, buy books, pay attention to the color of their waddles, look at the thickness of the shells, learn what to feed them and not to feed them. As I grew in knowledge of chicken tending, I started to love it more and more. I understood why a certain hen was cranky or why all the hens stopped laying for a day. Something else happened, my chickens got healthier and started to produce more.

What am I saying? The things we love, we learn about. The things we learn about, we understand. The things we understand, we love more. The things we love, we think about. I think often that I have left off learning my God. He's right here in the Bible waiting for us to know Him! It takes work to study the Bible. It takes time to dive in and understand His thinking. It takes doing it on purpose. But He has beautifully made Himself available to us and we have failed to love Him with all our mind. I have been married 23 years. I tend to be able to know what my husband's thinking is on many subjects from how to care for a car, to what the best food is. You know why? I've studied him. I read his facial expressions. I watch to see what he likes and doesn't like. I listen when he's talking. My mind has been focused because I love him and as a result, I've learned more and more about him every day that I have been married. may I purposely learn more about my Saviour every day as I'm a child of God.

May I encourage you as I have been encouraged to get back to the basics? Jesus so kindly laid it out very clearly for us. Love Him with all our heart, soul, and mind.