July 6 - Mind - Mark 12:30

 

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

 

We’ve been reading through Deuteronomy 6. It’s a passage that Jews call the shema. It’s a call that Jesus calls “the first and greatest commandment.”

 

In Deuteronomy, we are commanded to love God with three parts of our being – heart, soul, and might (strength). In the Gospels – see Mark 12 above – Jesus commands us to love God with four parts – heart, soul, strength … and … our minds.

 

The mind in Jesus’ statement and translating from the Greek means exactly what you’d expect. It means insight, understanding, and intellect. We are thus called to love God with all our perception and discernment. We are to seek him with our reason and our acumen.

When I said yesterday that the soul yearns for truth, it would be easy to focus on the intellectual portion of that statement – “truth.” No. When talking about the soul, we need to focus on the yearning, the emotion. We’re passionate beings. And as we said yesterday, we’re passionate for more than just romance and relations. We yearn for wisdom, truth, and character.

 

So where does “the mind” come in? Our minds determine how we interpret experiences and channel emotions. Our minds influence how we pursue pleasure (and in what ways we choose not to). Our minds help us set priorities and define our goals and choose how we’ll achieve them.

 

The mind speaks of our conscious intentionality. Thus, Jesus is calling us to love God consciously, intentionally, purposefully. Jesus is calling us to consciously choose him and his ways daily.

 

And the question is … Do you?

 

In Christ’s Love,

a guy who has taken

the Myers-Briggs

personality test.

I am more of a “thinker”

than a “feeler.”

This one is easier for me.

The nice part is that

God has woven into

each of our personalities

ways to connect with God.

So … how do you connect?