‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.’ Deuteronomy 6:5

This is the first commandment, but how many of us practice it? The commandment is challenging us in three areas: heart, soul, and strength, which incorporate every aspect of our being. Heart speaks of emotions, soul speaks of intellect, thoughts and reasoning, and strength speaks of our physical energy.

How do we love someone we haven’t seen? We may not have physically seen God but we can read about Him and we can receive Jesus into our hearts and the Holy Spirit will reveal Him to us.

The scripture tells us in 1 John 4:19 ‘We love him because he first loved us. ‘ If we want to love God, we need to consider how much He loves us.

Romans 5:8 says, ‘but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us ‘. As we focus on His love for us then our love for Him grows. The creator of the universe set aside His divinity became a man and died an agonising death on our behalf. What’s there not to love about Him?

Here’s where your soul comes into it: you have to think about it, meditate on it, read His word and start to understand the enormity of salvation through faith in Christ. ‘But his delight is in the law of the LORD, and in His law, he meditates day and night ‘. Psalm 1:2

Finally, might. I have puzzled about this: how do you love God with all your strength? Love isn’t just a word, it’s an action. You just have to watch people greeting or saying goodbye at airports. Jesus said in John 14:15 ‘If you love me, you will keep my commandments ‘. We can use our might or, as some translations say, strength. When you feel tired, find that extra strength to do His will. When you are scared of what others may think, find the strength to overcome your fear. If you have His love, you can persevere when others would give up.

I pray we can all find a way to love God as we ought, as He deserves.