What would be your response to the somewhat provocative question:
Do You Love God With All Your Heart? My own response came through asking myself some correlated questions. These helped me delve into this very fundamental Christian teaching.
What is your response to this very important question? How does it help you in your Christian walk reflect on it?
No one loves God with all their heart. No one knows what this means, actually. Some like to pretend they know, but they can't possibly since their heart is "deceitful above all things and desperately wicked" (
Jeremiah 17:9) and thus, as the prophet wrote, unknowable (except to God).
Jesus said,
Mark 7:21-22
21 "For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed the evil thoughts, fornications, thefts, murders, adulteries,
22 deeds of coveting and wickedness, as well as deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride and foolishness.
It's no wonder, then, that the Psalmist wrote,
Psalm 139:23-24
23 Search me, O God, and know my heart; Try me and know my thoughts;
24 And see if there be any wicked way in me, And lead me in the everlasting way.
If God does not reveal the content of our hearts to us, we can't ever truly know what is in our hearts. He does so, certainly, but not all at once, working instead over our entire lifetime to expose what is truly in our hearts to us so that we might be freed from its deceitfulness and desperate wickedness and thus enjoy Him more and more.
All those who have become "new creatures in Christ" (
2 Corinthians 5:17) benefit from the life and work of the Holy Spirit (
Romans 8:9-16) who acts to transform the born-again believer, over time conforming their mind and heart to the will and way of God, shaping in them the character of Christ (
Romans 8:29; Galatians 5:22-23; 2 Corinthians 3:18). He it is who creates in God's children an ever-expanding love for God, his own love, in fact, filling and overflowing from them (
Romans 5:5) as they live in daily, conscious, explicit submission to the Spirit's control (
Romans 6:13-22; Romans 8:14; Romans 12:1, James 4:7-10; 1 Peter 5:6).
But what is meant by "love for God"? It isn't mere gratefulness. It isn't sentimentalism or emotionalism. It isn't even obedience to God's commands, as so many Christians think. By "love" God means "desire." When He tells us to love Him with all we are (
Matthew 22:36-38), He means
desire Him above all else, with everything we've got. Out of this desire for God all of our Christian living is to arise (
1 Corinthians 13:1-3), and if it doesn't, Paul wrote, what we say, or know, or do is spiritually
useless.