Love God with all your Heart, Spirit, Mind, and Strength

Love God with all your Heart, Spirit, Mind, and Strength

Return to our Way of Life

Overview

The greatest commandment is to love the Lord our God. Let this love be the foundation of our lives, actions, relationships, and hope. That we wake up everyday and choose to love God.

Invitations to Engage

  • Ask God to let you experience a portion of the affection He has for you.
  • Meditate on the way your love of God dances and moves with God’s love for you.
  • Reflect on what rhythms and patterns in your life helps and hinders your love for God.
  • Meditate on the unique ways your heart, spirit, mind, and/or strength love the Lord our God.
  • Contemplate on how God receives your expressions, acts, and works of love.

Explore

We love because God first loved us. A love that is sustaining and ever-present. So much so that we often fail to sense it with every life-giving breath we take. The love of God is beyond comprehension. It sustains all of creation. It is warm and tender while being unwavering. The love of God invites us to love God. Invitations in moments and ways we so easily miss. The vastness of God’s love is too much for our minds. This simple fact means we often misunderstand love. We often see God’s love as so much smaller than it is. God’s love is deep enough and wide enough to hold all things.

So we read about Jesus. He tells us the greatest commandment is to love the Lord our God. To love God with all your heart, spirit, mind, and strength. This is a choice we must make every day and in every moment. It is both natural and foreign. In many ways, it is our natural state of being to love our God. In many ways, it is against our nature. If I sit in silence, my mind and body would not choose to love God, but I may discover Gods love for me.

Thus, we start the journey of loving the Lord our God. This endless journey. A journey that will take longer than the breaths we will get to take. It is a journey we must choose every day. One we continue with the strength and breath we still have. Continuing on because we desire a deep and growing love for God. With each step we take each day, we are building and defending that desire in our hearts.

Our love for our God needs to be expressed in more than words. It is not a desire that can be easily fulfilled. It is a desire that transforms our heart, spirit, mind, and body. It is a desire that bears fruit when it is paired with perseverance and increasing passion. It is a love that humbles us. What is there that we can give or do for God? What in creation might be a worthy gift? There is only me. My frailty. My brokenness. My brevity. Beyond my expectations and experience of love – this is what our Lord longs for. The Lord our God has called me, all of me, beloved and enough. How can we do anything but love God with all that we are?

Loving our God is the foundation and cornerstone in the life of every Urban Monastic. Let us not lose sight of God or misplace His tenderness and mercy. It is from the soil of God’s love that the rest of our rule and lives grow.

Meditations on this Rule