Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your strength, and all your…

The man answered, "'You must love the LORD your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your strength, and all your mind.' And, 'Love your neighbor as yourself.'"  Luke 10:27

As I was praying, I was devoting myself again to the Lord.  After all the amazing blessings I had received today, I felt it was the least I could do.  I said to the Lord, I give you all my heart- that I don’t love things or people more than I would ever love you.  I give you all of my soul- that my entire being yearns to serve you and trust you.  I give you my strength- that my physical strength can push harder to remind me that my limitations don’t exist, and that you are limitless-  and that my mental strength (and the inevitable soon to be all-night study sessions) could be used for the benefit of your people, not just myself.  And I give you my…  I was blanking.

Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your strength and all your….  

Yes, I had completely blanked on a verse that I had read many times before.  These lines were in worship songs I had sang to praise him.  I had heard others say this verse time and time again.  Yet I couldn’t think of it. 

 I started wondering,

‘am I really that tired?  I guess I did had a long day and I had been driving a lot and...your mind’

Love the Lord your God with all your mind.

God reminded me as a knelt praying that my something was missing, and that I wasn’t serving the Lord with all of my mind.  I was missing that the Lord lives inside my heart and my soul and my strength, and also he lives within my mind.  I realized at that moment that my brain had not yet let the Lord in completely and without hesitation.  My brain full of mathematical formulas, chemical compounds, and lists of diseases and various ailments failed to include most important formula, most potent chemical and most powerful cure.  Jesus Christ.  It’s as if my blood-brain barrier wasn’t just protecting my brain from infections; it was keeping out the good stuff too.  He wasn’t diffusing across the membrane.  He just wasn’t permeable.  As if He was too polar, too charged, or had too much steric hindrance.  Then I realized how much of a nerd I was for the fact that this was actually what I was thinking.  But nerdy-ness aside, this really opened my eyes to something I had been missing.   

Today I asked the Lord to consume my mind.  It was the last thing, like I was holding out on letting Him have my complete self.  And maybe for you reading this it’s not your mind but it’s your heart or your soul or your strength.  But whatever it is, isn’t it time we gave Him everything?  Not just some or parts of ourselves, but ALL of ourselves.

 It’s not about giving of ourselves of what we feel we have left over to give or the parts of us that sin has broken to give.  It might be the weakest part of ourselves that we are hesitant to give, but sometimes it’s the stronger parts too.  Or at least the parts that we naively believe are stronger.  As a Christian, I find myself giving the Lord my problems in a sense.  I give the Lord what is broken in me and ask the Lord for healing.  But what I failed to realized is that the most damaged part, was the one that I didn’t think was broken to begin with.           

"You must love the LORD your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your strength, and all your mind."