Golden Nugget: How to Love the Lord with your Soul & Worship with Terry MacAlmon

 Jesus said in Mark 12:30: And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.

In our last post, we began to discuss the practicalities around loving the Lord.  We were discussing whether it is good enough to only tell the Lord you love him.  Last time we were discussing ‘loving the Lord with all your heart’ and we’re taking our discussion from the angle of sacrificial and giving love.  Maybe if you read the article here you can get the whole picture.

What is your soul?  The soul consists of your mind, your will, and your emotions.  However, in Mark 12:30 Jesus separates’ the mind from the soul, so we will only look at the soul as the will and emotions and discuss the mind separately.  Many of us enjoy loving the Lord with our emotions.  We like the goosebump kind of worship.  That is actually why the church has become so ineffective, since this kind of “loving” the Lord is very selfish.  It’s nice to go to church for an exciting “kick” and then being able to say we had a good time with the Lord.  But who is this kind of worship about?  Isn’t it about you and me, to get a good feeling about being religious?  What did we sacrifice and what did we give?

Consider for a moment what it was that gave the early church in the book

of Acts a kick.  Wasn’t it the power of God that went with them as they healed the sick, preached the gospel, and drove out demons?  It was an emotional experience, yes, but one focused on the Lord and what He had done with them for others and not just for themselves.  They sacrificed their selfish emotional experience for a God- and neighbour directed experience.  This resulted most of the time in severe persecution during which other emotions, such as fear and anxiety, manifested.  What did they do with these emotions?  They turned it into faith.  They did not allow their carnal nature and Satan the pleasure of enjoying these negative emotions, but sacrificed these feelings to the Lord in exchange for faith.  We do enjoy the attention that these negative emotions create for us, don’t we?  Satan is a master deceiver and our sinful nature enjoys going along with him.  It’s only our acting in faith that counters this.  For example, in Acts 4 we read that Peter and John were arrested and after they were released, the believers responded as recorded in verses 23 to 31.

We, therefore, love the Lord with the emotion part of our soul by sacrificing selfish emotions in exchange for obedience and faith.  What does this obedience consist of?  Obedience is all about doing the good works the Lord has prepared for us – thus giving of ourselves.  For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them, (Ephesians 2:10).

The soul also consists of our will.  We have been created with a free will and this is the area where our love for the Lord is tested most severely.  Do we want to sacrifice our will in exchange for the Lord’s will?  How often do we pray in both the Lord’s Prayer and our general prayers: “Let your will be done”?  Do we really want it?  What if the Lord’s will contradicts our will?  Once when the Lord convicted me of something He wanted me to get rid of because it didn’t please Him, I told Him I wasn’t able to stop it.  I was too weak was my excuse.  Then He told me: “No, it’s not that you cannot, but that you don’t want to, for you can do all things through Him that gives you strength (Philippians 4:13) if you wanted to.  We often have a lot of excuses as to why we cannot act in obedience – not enough time and resources, etc.  But we know the saying: “Where there’s a will, there’s a way”.  Comfort and selfish ambition are the two great enemies of loving the Lord with your will.  The only way to love the Lord with the will part of your soul is to sacrifice your will in exchange for His will and to give yourself entirely for His purposes to be fulfilled through you.

“But I am within His will.  He blessed me with all the comforts I enjoy,” you may tell me now.  Is that so?  I challenge you to ask the Holy Spirit to show you which parts of your life are your will (what you want and desire) and which are His (what He wants for you).  When He convicts you, why not sacrifice your soul (will and emotions) in exchange for what God has planned for your life and in that way show your love towards Him by giving what He requires of you to give.  Then you can enjoy what He promised you.

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