Learning How To Love God His Way

Learning God’s Language of Love- (How to love God)

Matthew 22:34 “But when the Pharisees had heard that he had put the
Sadducees to silence, they were gathered together.”

Matthew 22:35-36 “Then one of them, which was a lawyer, asked him a
question, tempting him, and saying, Master, which is the great
commandment in the law?”

Matthew 22:37-38 “Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God
with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first
and great commandment.”

• The Command is the most important God has ever given.

• The Confusion about what it means to love God.
• The Characteristics of loving God with all your heart, soul, mind, and
strength. [Mat. 22:37-40; Mark 12:28-31; Luke 10:27]

1. The Command to love God

Jesus quotes from Deuteronomy 6:5: “And thou shalt love the LORD thy God
with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might.”

•Matthew says – heart, soul, mind

•Luke says – heart, soul, mind, strength
Neither is a verbatim quote – they are interpretative statements of what
Jesus taught.

• “all your heart”

a. your total inner being – every one of your faculties – the control panel
of your inner being.
b. Proverbs 4:23: Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the
issues of life.
c. Psalm 66:18: If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me.
d. Proverbs 23:26: My son, give me your heart, and let your eyes observe
my ways.
• “with all your soul”
a. your total person – your whole life - inside and outside
b. Genesis 12:5: And Abram took Sarai his wife, and Lot his brother's son,
and all their substance that they had gathered, and the souls that they
had gotten in Haran; and they went forth to go into the land of Canaan.
. . .”
 c. Genesis 46:26: All the souls that came with Jacob into Egypt, which
came out of his loins, besides Jacob's sons' wives, all the souls were
threescore and six;
• “with all your strength”
a. The Hebrew word translated strength is the word “very”—as in the
phrase, “thank you very much.”
b. The Hebrew word “very” communicates that we are to love God to the
greatest extent of our ability.

We are to love God with our total being – inside and outside – (mind, will,
emotions, body, spirit) We are to love God to the utmost extent of our
capacity (all our strength). The is the first and greatest of all God’s
commands!

2. The Confusion about what it means to love God.

Most of us associate “love” with feelings of affection or emotion. We talk
about loving a lot of things: food, pets, things, people, places. What we mean
by “love” and how strongly we feel love for any particular thing or person is
largely dependent upon our frame of mind and emotions at any given
moment. Most Christians do not sustain a continual strong emotional feeling
of “love” for God. We need to learn what God means when He tells us to love
Him with all our heart, soul, and strength.