Love God With All Your Heart

As part of Lent we’re inviting people to enter into practices centred around “The Jesus Creed”:

‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbour as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these. (Mark 12:29-31)

In this season we are reminded that God’s love transforms us into people who are beloved to love. Each week we emphasize a different part of the Jesus Creed. This week: love God with all your heart.

The heart is the primary organ of faith in the Bible. Proverbs 4:23 wisely teaches us:

“Above all else, guard your heart,
for everything you do flows from it.”

Too often in our culture we equate “heart” with simply feelings and emotions, like “I went with my heart on that one.” This suggests that our feelings trumped our thinking here. But a Biblical perspective understands the heart as the centre of a person that combines your emotions and cognition, and also your will and imagination. It is much deeper and more wholistic.

And a key way to guard your heart and to shape your heart is through prayer. That’s why our first Lenten practice is prayer. And specifically the Lord’s Prayer (Matthew 6:9-13):

Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name,
your kingdom come,
your will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us today our daily bread.
And forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from the evil one.
For yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever.
Amen.

Scot McKnight, in his wonderful book The Jesus Creed, makes this connection: “Jesus’ creed of loving God and loving others (the Jesus Creed) morphs into a prayer of love of God and love of others (the Lord’s Prayer).”

Notice that the Jesus Creed has two sections: Love God and love others. And likewise the Lord’s Prayer has two sections: Love God (Our Father in heaven…) and love others (Give us today…). And so McKnight encourages us to let the Lord’s Prayer “mentor” our prayer life so that:

1. We learn to approach God as Father.
2. We learn what God really wants.
3. We learn to think of others.
4. We learn what everyone needs.

And he closes with this truth: “Prayer does not stop with the ‘Amen.’ It rises to its feet and walks off, with our built-up yearning turned into action.”

Or in the words of the great modern mystic, Frank Laubach:
“The Lord’s Prayer is not intercession. It is enlistment.”

Invitation to Practice:

Pray the Lord’s Prayer each day this week. Through this prayer invite Jesus to reside in your heart, shaping your will and imagination, your feelings and your thoughts, to love God and love your neighbour as yourself this Lenten season.

Some guidance with your practice:

• Choose the same specific time and place to pray the prayer each day. It helps with building the rhythm and reminder to pray it.
• Read each line of the prayer slowly.
• Pause after each line and meditate on the words you have read.
• Pray back to God whatever thoughts and prayers emerge from your meditation and then move on to the next line.
• Remember, the real “content” is not the words of the prayer, but your relationship with God.
  
  

Michael Yang is the campus pastor of The Tapestry Nights
Photo Credit: @jeztimms