With All My Heart

Love the Lord your God with all you heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. Deuteronomy 6:5

This is the memory verse from the Bible Study I'm going through right now. As I delve into this verse I am in a state of total depression with my oldest baby meeting his PreK teacher tonight; my own "teacher-mom" fears of losing time with kids...the ones in my home and the ones in my classroom; my friends and family dealing with the worst kinds of stress that I can't begin to fix for them; the school year hasn't even begun and already I can feel myself crawling into my hole and staying there until next summer...it all adds up to a pretty icky feeling Marlena.

Then, I look at this verse. There are a few words here that I found synonyms for that have helped me understand that these words are truly at the heart of our Christian lives!

LOVE: passion, attachment, affection

HEART: circulation, life force, intuition, center of emotion

SOUL: separate from the body, morality, emotion,  principle of life, feeling, thought, and actions

STRENGTH: muscle power, mental power, moral power, influential power

So many repeated sentiments here. Anything written in the Bible more than once...deserves a second glance in my opinion! This verse tells us to feel an affection for God, a passion for God that is so strong it takes over our emotions, our morals, our feelings, our brains, and our lives. If we can love God with everything we have, we will feel Him in every choice, every decision, and every moment.

THAT is reassuring! God leaves us with an instruction manual for life! I'm tired of throwing the instructions away and trying to figure it out on my own. The day I started cracking open those instructions and READING the Bible, is the day I realized how beautiful and fulfilling God's love can be. However, I don't think I could feel God's love without giving it first. It's THERE...but I think I would tell myself that it was all coincidence or luck or something completely NOT divine if that were the case!

This verse opened my eyes. I can feel that passion, that affection, that power that comes with loving God. A life filled with love for God is a life WELL LIVED!

***Dear God help me as I seek you in everyday life. Help me to love YOU with all of myself. With my mind, my heart, my soul, my power, and ALL of my emotions! I know that my relationships on this earth will strengthen if I can first give YOU my love. God, I pray that I can feel you in my life throughout each moment. I pray that you will show yourself in the hard times as often as the good and that I will have the power to SEE you in those moments. Use me as an example of what a Christian life can be. Let me be the example that my students as well as my own children need. IN YOUR NAME I pray...AMEN!