The Great Commandment

Jesus gave His followers a command. In fact, He said it is the greatest and most important of all His commands. So we call it the Great Commandment.

Anytime God’s Word asks you to do something, it is an invitation to go on an adventure with Him. The Great Commandment is such an invitation. It will never expire. You will never reach its end in your lifetime. This is the greatest adventure because it is a lifelong quest. It is the adventure that all adventures depend on. If you commit to this adventure, you will find the motivation and the strength to undertake all the rest. See how important this is?

So here it is. Jesus’ Great Commandment calls you to do two things: (1) to love God with all your mind, with all your heart, and with all your strength, and (2) to love those around you as much as you love yourself (Mark 12:30–31).

If Jesus said this is the greatest and most important commandment, then we should do everything in our power to be great at obeying it. Not just good. Great!

  You love God with all your mind when you respect Him with clean thinking, when you seek Him with curiosity, and when you creatively show the world His care and concern.

  You love God with all your heart when you give Him your passion and interest, when you take the risk of adventuring with Him, and when you overcome your fear of what others think of you for being sold out to Jesus Christ.

  You love God with all your strength when you serve Him with boundless energy and when you make following Him your first priority every day.

  You love people well when you become less self-centered and more others-centered. What can you do to help others today? Who can you encourage today? How can you help others feel like winners today? Focus on meeting the needs of others with integrity and kindness.

You must love God with all three parts of your life, not just one or two. Love Him with all your mind, heart, and strength. When you love Jesus fully with all three, your life’s adventures will have direction and meaning.

  If you learn about God with your intellect but never adventure with Him or if you fail to regularly enter into passionate worship and prayer, you will know about Him but feel distant from Him.

  If you worship God passionately with your heart but never go out and use your strength to serve others, you might feel close to Him, but others won’t know it or be inspired by it.

  If you accomplish great things for God with your strength but know little about Him and seldom seek Him, people will be grateful for your acts of kindness but never detect any true knowledge and passion for God.

Picking and choosing how to love God will leave you running on fumes and will do little to inspire those around you to follow Christ. So the adventure is to love God with all your mind, with all your passion, and with all your physical strength. Choose all three and refuse to be just okay at them. Be great!

To love is to give yourself away. The greatest adventure in life is to love God and to love people. You can give without loving, but you can’t love without giving. God loved you so much that He gave His one and only Son, Jesus Christ, at His own expense to die on the cross for your sins. In response to His love, you should give yourself to Him fully.

Love is giving to others at your expense. Lust is getting from others at their expense.

The greatest adventure that will undergird all other adventures you undertake is the Great Commandment. By giving yourself to God with all your intellect, with all your passion, and with all your strength, and by giving yourself to others, you discover real meaning. True joy and happiness are found on the giving end of life, not on the getting end. Love God, love people, love life!

In My Experience:

Can I make a confession? I didn’t discover the need to evenly balance my love for God until more recently, and I regret it. To be frank, I had bought into the lie that the passion, or heart piece, was too emotional for a guy like me. So I emphasized my intellect and service.

My love for God—mind, heart, and strength—was not equally balanced and I felt like a candle about to flicker out. If fire is to provide light, warmth, and create atmosphere, it must have three elements—fuel, oxygen, and heat. If one is missing there is no fire. I was gasping for air and didn’t know why.

I found myself studying the Bible as if it were a textbook, as if God were a subject to be mastered. I was dutifully working for Him rather than lovingly serving Him. I acted as if He couldn’t accomplish everything I’m doing through someone else or with no one’s help at all. I convinced myself that the passion piece was covered simply by the fact I’m Pentecostal, and I didn’t want to be one who is “way out there.”

But deep inside I knew my zeal was weak. The light came on when I simply ran out of physical and spiritual energy. And believe me when I say the Lord has a sense of humor. I attended a non-Pentecostal church service and saw people passionately in love with Jesus and it showed. I humbled myself and asked God to teach me to love Him from my heart with the same intensity of my head and hands.

The quest to love God from my heart started with an acknowledgement that raising my hands, kneeling in prayer, singing out, lifting my voice to pray were biblical mandates and not optional church traditions. To adventure with God, by doing everything His Word invites me to experience, I was going to have to put myself out there and just do it.

Yes, it was awkward, especially at first. But to start an adventure you have to act your way into obedience and let the feelings catch up later. And that’s what happened. The Lord began to teach me to let Him carry me away in His presence, without letting myself get carried away—you know, “worshipping” just to impress someone like a girl, a parent, or a church leader—or doing things just to draw attention to myself.

In the process, my confidence in God and our relationship grew. I did less and less out of fear or a sense of duty and more and more out of love and devotion. I discovered lightness in our relationship, as though the burden of study and service had been lifted. I was still reading the Bible and working as hard as always but felt plugged into the strength of the very One I was studying and working so hard for. My physical and spiritual strength were continually being renewed. Duty turned to joy.

If you commit to being great at the Great Commandment, you will find the motivation and the strength to undertake every adventure God calls you on.

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* The “soul” is the seat of intellect, will, and emotion. It is the bridge between “heart” and “mind.” Loving God with our whole soul is the sum total of loving God with head, heart, and strength.