Rock 4: Love God With All Your Strength
God Gives Each Of Us Strength To Serve Others
We are to love God with all of our strength. That means all of our energy. But the gospel of Mark also uses the word strength to mean ability. God has given each one of us gifts, talents, and abilities. And in our use of those, we can either commit our energy to glorify ourselves or glorify God.
To love God with all of our energy, with all of our abilities, with all of our talents, and with all of our spiritual gifts, means serving the Lord by ministering to others within His church. It’s a way of expressing our love to Him. It means holding nothing back when it comes to our energy level in showing our love for God. We are loving God with all of our abilities, with all of our being…with all of our strength.
“If God commands you to do something, that means He’s already given you all that is needed to do it.” Pastor John Mark Caton
Love God With All Your “Muchness”
Love God With All Your “Muchness”The word we read as “strength” in our English versions of the Bible is actually a translation of the Hebrew work me’od. Me’od occurs nearly 300 times in the scriptures. In context of today’s post, Jesus commandment to “love God with all your strength,” was a quote from the Jewish “Shammah” found in Deuteronomy. In the Shammah, me’od would more accurately be understood as an adverb that comes alongside other words to augment and intensify their meaning and significance. For example, in Genesis when God created man and woman, He declared them “very good” — or “me’od good — implying much, extremely, significantly good.
So rather than “strength’ being the commandment Jesus gave us to love God, it might more aptly be described as “strengthening” all of our energy, our abilities, our talents, and our spiritual gifts — loving God by devoting every possibility, opportunity, and capacity that we have been by God to honoring Him and loving your neighbor as He loves us.
[Some content in this section is taken from an online article, “What Does It Mean To Love God With All Of Your Strength”]
Serving Within The Body
“For just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others.” Romans 12:4-5 16
“From Him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.” Ephesians 4:16
As followers of Christ, it is imperative that we participate in His work within the local church. We are not intended to function in isolation. It is the synergy created by men and women of all diverse natures bringing together their God-given abilities, talents, and gifts that equips the church to be the presence of Jesus Christ in the world!
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