“The most important commandment is this . . . ‘You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength.” Mark 12:29-30 (NLT)
Jesus says in Mark 12:29-30, “The most important commandment is this . . . ‘You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength” (NLT).
Do you hear the emotion in the words of Jesus? He’s saying he doesn’t want me to just kind of love him. He wants me to love him passionately—with all my heart, all my soul, all my mind, and all my strength. God wants more than my head knowledge. He wants an emotional relationship with me.
Here are some things to understand emotions.
First, God has emotions. God is an emotional God. He feels joy, grief, pain, and hatred toward sin. He gets frustrated with people. The only reason I have emotions is because I'm made in God’s image. If God wasn’t an emotional God, I wouldn’t have any emotions.
Second, my ability to feel is a gift from God. Emotions are what make me human. It is my emotional ability that allows me to love and create and to be faithful, loyal, kind, and generous—to experience all the emotions that are attached to the good things in life. My emotions may not always seem like a gift, but even the negative ones have a purpose in my life.
Third, there are two extremes to avoid. Emotionalism is the extreme of saying the only thing that matters in life is how I feel—not what I think or what’s right or wrong. Everything in life is based on my emotions. Emotions control my life.
On the other hand, stoicism says feelings aren’t important at all, and the only things that matter are my intellect and my will.
There are many differing approaches to emotions. Some people have decided that it doesn’t really matter how I feel. They downplay emotions—but that’s not right.
The Bible says this about God: “You look deep within the mind and heart, O righteous God” (Psalm 7:9 NLT). He really cares about what I think and feel!
God gave me my emotions for a reason, and he wants me to worship him emotionally—with all my heart and all my mind.
In Summary:
Jesus teaches in Mark 12:29-30 that the greatest commandment is to love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength—showing that God desires a deep, passionate, and emotional relationship with us, not just intellectual belief. This highlights the importance of emotions in our faith, as God Himself is emotional and created us in His image with the ability to feel. Emotions are a gift that allow me to experience life fully, but I must avoid two extremes: emotionalism, where feelings rule over truth, and stoicism, where emotions are ignored. Instead, God calls me to a balanced, wholehearted worship that involves both my thoughts and my feelings.
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