From my study:
Loving the Lord is not just about loving Him, it is something that is sacrificial.
Deut 6:5 says:
And thou shalt love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might.
The Hebrew reads:
And you love the Lord God in all of heart of you and in all of soul of you and in all of utterly you.
This means, you have to love the Lord your God with EVERY thing that you are. Utterly means completely, absolutely. Completely does not mean 95 percent, it means 100 percent.
Deut 10:12 adds on: And now, Israel, what doth the LORD thy God require of thee, but to fear the LORD thy God, to walk in all his ways, and to love him, and to serve the LORD thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul,
This includes serving the Lord with all of your heart and all of your soul – the soul points to the flesh, breath, life – that means even your flesh has to love the Lord, the very parts of you that help you to be a living creature must be submitted in love to serving Christ.
But still, it goes deeper. Deut 30:6 shows how the Lord will help us:
And the LORD thy God will circumcise thine heart, and the heart of thy seed, to love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, that thou mayest live.
To circumcise is to cut short, curtail, cut down, destroy. The Lord will cut off or destroy everything in your heart and soul and in your seed (that which you produce) that does not enable your love for Him. In addition, He kills these things so that we may have life. God created us out of love. He wants to love us, but He also wants us to praise, worship, and love Him. Anything that blocks that praise, worship, and love has to go. If you are to serve Him and you give yourself to Him, count on some things being circumcised.
This is not just an Old Testament principle because Jesus says it again in Matt. 22:37:
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.
And in Mark 12:30 :
And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this [is] the first commandment.
And in Luke 10:27 :
And he answering said, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbour as thyself.
Jesus also adds on here, that not only should man love God with all of himself, but also love his neighbor as he loves himself.
Many of us can quote at least part of any of the above scriptures and we can do it without really putting conscious thought into it. But if we got to the very heart of what God wants for His people, we would not be so lackadaisical about it. It is deep and it is not easy, but since God created us, it is in us and we are capable of doing it. I firmly believe that God would not ask us to do something we could not do. We can walk out the Word or He wouldn’t have commanded it. Is it easy? No. The world teaches us to do the opposite. However, when we said yes and accepted Jesus as our Lord and Savior, we were new creatures. We are no longer of this world, but of His Kingdom. God is love and His Kingdom is established through it. So let us love and serve the Lord with all our heart, mind, soul, strength. Let us work toward loving Him, ourselves, and our brethren utterly. Every day you look in the mirror, you see His love. It is real, it is tangible, it is you. Pour it out.
