By
Shelby G. Floyd
Love God With All Your Heart
It is so good to be here today on this beautiful fall day. We thank God for the beautiful weather that we have enjoyed. Today I am speaking on “Wholehearted Love” or “Wholehearted Religion.” The word religion comes from a word that means to be bound back to God. In the beginning man and woman were friends with God. They walked and talked together in the garden of Eden. But sin interrupted that relationship and so the office of religion is to bring man and woman back into a proper relationship with Almighty God. And the way that is to be done is through Wholehearted Love! Our relationship with God has been dark, but it is not so dark that it cannot be renewed. Mankind became depraved, but the love of God can spark in the sinner the change of heart that leads to the renewed relationship with God based on the sacrificial blood of Jesus Christ. Then we can sing “Thank you Lord for loving me. And thank you Lord for saving me!” Then we can spend the rest of our life loving God with all of our heart.
Therefore, we can love God in a halfhearted way, or we can love Him with all of our heart or the whole heart. So we are concerned today about loving God with all of our heart, not just part of our heart. In defining our Bible heart it has four parts. It involves our intellect or our mind and our emotions or affections. But it also includes our willpower and our conscience. So those four parts of the heart are involved if we are going to love God with all of our heart–your mind, your affections, your conscience, and your willpower!
Our Lord Jesus Christ made it plain that we are to love God with all of our heart: “The foremost is, ‘Hear, Israel! The Lord is 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.’ The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these” (Mark 12:29-31 NASB).