Love God With All Your Strength

As part of Lent we’re inviting you 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 strength.

There are a variety of ways to translate the word “strength” here. Eugene Peterson in The Message version of the Bible translates this word as “muscle” or “energy.” We’ll let that understanding help guide us to love God here.

It’s important to know: God values bodies. Matter, matters to God. At the heart of the Jesus Story is “The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighbourhood” (John 1:14, The Message). This shows us that we cannot love God (or our neighbours) without taking care of our physicality, our muscles and energy, our bodies.

One of the biggest changes and challenges in my discipleship to Jesus happened when I realized that what I ate, how much I slept, whether or not I was exercising regularly––were spiritual matters. These things mattered along the same lines as my prayer life, study of scripture, serving, and being in community with others.

Therefore the invitation this week is to get your body, your muscle and energy, involved as part your prayer life and your way of loving God.

Invitation to Practice:

• Like Jesus “move” into your neighbourhood by going for a short walk with God each day of this week. Leave your phone behind if possible, and pray with God, be present to where you are, enjoy being in the body God gave you.
• Or, do something a bit more intense like a run or bike ride. The point is to get moving and care for your body each day.
• Before you get started on whatever exercise you choose take a moment to pause and be conscious that God is with you.
• If you’re working out take the moments between sets to reflect on something for which you are thankful. Or let those moments be a time of surrender and breathing out your worries and anxieties to God.
• And then allow the clarity of mind that comes after a walk or exercise to be a time for prayer, journaling, and talking with God.

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