Loving God With Our All

"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..."
-Jesus, Mark 12:30

"I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless..."
-Paul, 1 Thessalonians 5:23

These two verses make it clear that, whatever it involves, I am to love God with everything that makes ME. Everything. Without getting into this discussion deeper than we can in 5 days, I am only going to scratch the surface of three main areas that make up ME and that make up YOU. These are:

• Our Hearts - our affections and desires, emotions: the spiritual side of us
  
• Our Minds - our intelligence and thoughts: the intellectual side of us
  
• Our Bodies - the physical side of us

We talked yesterday about "junk food" in not only our physical lives but also our spiritual and intellectual lives. This is an area which God deals with me regularly. If you are attempting to grow as a Christian, I'm sure He deals with you in these areas often as well. The glorious, spiritual life He has given us is wrapped up in human, earthly flesh. No, I don't mean that gives us license to sin because we can't help what our flesh does. But, ever since the Fall, we have had to struggle with living in a fallen world with fallen bodies and minds. God desires to preserve our spirits, souls and bodies (i.e. our hearts, minds and bodies) until he comes as the above verse suggests. If that is true, than we can be victorious in these areas! However, it is only as we turn ourselves over to Him that we can achieve victory. This does not mean we do nothing. God wants us to live a life of discipline. Ouch! Yes, I know that is a tough one. As I said, I struggle with it daily. Let's explore a little bit further this week the practical applications of loving God with all that is in us. My hope is that by the end of the week, we'll all be just a little closer to God's wonderful purpose for our lives.