By Rebecca Thackeray
‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart.’
Deuteronomy 6:4-6.
These words taken from Deuteronomy are loudly and boldly spoken every week within our church. Echoing around the sanctuary, words that flow from passionate and believing hearts, repeated by both old and young, with the sounds spilling out onto the streets of Glasgow.
These words need to be heard. The Israelites had to be called to attention, reminding them of who their God was. Moses was calling them out to reacknowledge the Sovereign One, the One who is in control of all things, the One who brought them out of slavery, the One who created our innermost being, the only and holy One. God isn’t only deserving because of what He has done, but for who He is.
This wasn’t a passive thing that was mentioned to the Israelites just on a whim; it was something that intentionally required our whole being to respond. They are repeated later in the New Testament when the Pharisees asked Jesus what the greatest commandment is, and part of this was it. Words that are instructed to be on our hearts bound up in our core, but they are not meant to remain there and collect dust.
Take the heart, for example; it is an organ that pumps life-giving nourishment to the whole body, circulating to all areas, which gives fuel and power to all limbs so they can be put into action. However, the heart also has its own blood vessels on, around, and through it to ensure that it stays healthy and strong; this organ is also surrounded by the perfect amount of fluid and enveloped in a sack, which is cushioned and protected between two airbag-like lungs. This isn’t a mistake, but it demonstrates an intentional God who knows exactly what we need and supplies it to ensure that it can provide for the rest of the body strongly and efficiently.
Moses instructs the Israelites to remind themselves of these words and live them constantly! Our God is so gracious; He gives us all we need to serve Him, from the heart to the hands; he doesn’t expect us to just do these things from a place of emptiness or within our own strength. Instead, it is from a place of transformation within our heart, through the Holy Spirit, where we have received and accepted the love of Christ Jesus firstly so that this love may overflow into action. All He asks us is to respond with the love that He has placed within our hearts: ‘We love because he first loved us.’. God deserves our whole being in response to who He is and what He’s done.
Ask: What three things in Deuteronomy 6:4-5 are we to love the Lord with?
Seek: What does it look like to love God with all your heart, soul and might?
Knock: Ask God to reveal to you what may be in your heart and ask Him to fill you afresh with His love.
