We are CREATED to love Him in four spheres of life. Our heart represents our emotions. Our soul represents our identity. Our mind represents our thoughts and our strengths represent our resources. He says we will love Him this way BECAUSE He loves us this way!
This is a commandment but also a declaration. We pampered saints sometimes don’t like to be told what to do. God is a perfect Father, though, and He's telling us "This is true about you." If we submit to this commandment, this truth, this appropriate response to His love toward us, then it becomes a freeing, life-giving declaration. This is first priority because God knows that if this is in place, everything else will be grace-filled and so on. This reality will have the greatest impact on our heart, over any other thing in this Earth lifetime.
We do need to put our involvement into this. We take intentional steps to make the most of this declaration. (Sort of like saying, “You’re going to be a successful Botanist". That’s a great statement and truth if you’ve got that inclination, but you then need to put energy and time into learning about plants, trees, dirt, water….)
The greatest grace we can receive is the anointing to feel God’s love and to express it. It brings the greatest freedom and has the greatest reward. Let's turn the focus of our life from what we are to DO to what we are to BECOME. Our greatest calling shouldn't be the size of our ministry, buisness, bank account, etc. It should be the size of our heart. Everything else follows.
*All Our Heart
We love God with our emotions, our affections, which are the very impulse of desire that affects our decisions. We have a significant role in determining how our emotions develop over time. We can “set” our love or affections on anything that we choose. Our emotions eventually follow whatever we se ourselves to purse. As we change our mind, the Spirit changes our heart (emotions).
Because he has set his love (heart) upon Me, therefore I will deliver him. I will set him on high because he has known My name. Psalm 91:14
*All Our Mind
We fill our mind with that which inspires love for God instead of what diminishes it. Our mind is the doorway to our inner man that greatly affects our capacity to love. Much of our life takes place in our mind.
The language of the human spirit is images or pictures. Our mind is an internal movie screen that continually shows us pictures. It is like a camera that stores our memoires.
It's a vast universe inside of us that will never ever be turned off. We cannot shut down the images in our mind, but we can direct them by MEDITAING on God’s Word. We can replace dark thoughts with new ones, rewriting the script of the movie that we continually watch inside.
We love God with our mind by taking the time and effort to come into agreement with the truth about Him and His purposes. This involves refusing lies about His ways and His heart as tender Father and passionate King.
*All Our strength
This is to love God with our natural resources (time, money, energy, talents, words and influence). We express our love for God in the way we use our resources. The normal way to use them is to increase our personal comfort and honor.
God loves for us to express our love to Him by investing our strengths into our relations with God and His purposes. By doing this we sow our strengths into God’s bank. He multiplies and then returns our investments back to us. However, He does it in His own timing and way.
“Your Father, Who sees in secret, will reward you openly. “(Matthew 6:18)
“My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness.” (2 Corinthians 12:9)
*All Our Soul
We establish our identity in our relationship with God instead of in our accomplishments and in the recognitions we receive from people. Our identity is determined by the way we define our success and value and thus, how we see ourselves.
God’s love for us is what determines our personal worth. We've got to define our success as being ones who are loved and chosen by God and who love Him in return.
We are to be anchored in this truth as the basis of our success and worth, rather than in our accomplishment, recognition, possessions or relationships. Our identity must be established on being loved by God and in loving Him back, instead of on our accomplishments or failures.
Our confession is “I am loved by God and I am a lover of God, therefore I am successful.” Burn-out does not come from working hard, but from working with a wrong spirit. When we work for success we get burned out. When we work from success our spirit is strengthened! As we change the way we define success, we will love God much better because we will have much less emotional traffic inside our heart and mind.
No more false identity in strengths / accomplishments!
Here's to full confidence in the grace of God!!
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