WITH ALL YOUR MIND
Today’s Scripture: “’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.’” Mark 12:30, ESV
Theme: Loving God with all your mind means learning to know Him more and trusting what you cannot understand.
KNOWING GOD
Knowing God involves not only learning about Him (say through your Life Group, your personal quiet time, or attending a weekly service), but involves following through in faith. It means to look at things you cannot know by fact...and choose to accept them anyway. One of these things is God’s unconditional love for you.
A MAN AFTER GOD’S HEART?
David was passionate about following God. God Himself even says that David was “a man after My own heart” (Acts 13:22). I’m so thankful that the Bible records David’s foibles and foul-ups, not just his admirable traits and successes. It helps me recognize how great God’s love is for me. It helps my mind choose to trust in God’s love when I mess up or fall short. You see, David wasn’t a good man who just occasionally slipped up. He was a murderer and an adulterer who found God’s grace. David was so passionate about God that he described his longing for God as a “deer panting for streams of water” (Psalm 42:1).
In the same way, I’m not “a nice guy with an occasional sin problem.” I’m a “sinner saved only by the grace of God.” I don’t think I will ever fully understand WHY God loves me so much—being who I am—but more and more I have come to understand how very much He DOES love me! Not only me but you, too. No matter how terrible you may think you are, you’re right. Yet, God loves and can redeem even the most broken.
Make It Personal: Spend time this week with God. Read His Word. Ask the Spirit to explain sections you do not understand. Grow in both knowledge and faith as you draw close to God.
Pray: Thank You, Father, for Your unexplainable but unshakeable love for me. Help me to know and understand what I can. Help me to trust you when I do not completely understand. Amen.
Read: Psalm 42:1-2; 1 Kings 8:23; Psalm 69:5
Weekly Memory Verse: “Jesus answered, ‘The most important is, “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. 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.”’” Mark 12:29-30, ESV