love God with all my heart, soul, mind and strength

I came to realize today that after walking with God for over twenty years that I have not been loving Him as the Bible tells me that I should. As of today, I want to be on a new journey learning how to love God with all my heart and strength.

I agree with “triptme.” I think praying for this, daily, is a good place to start, because I don’t think we can just work-up the kind of love God wants from us. I think it must orginate with him.

Concerning actions vs. feelings, I don’t think that it is either/or. 1 Corinthians talks about how giving your body to be burned, and other great sacrifices, done without love, is nothing. So, in my opinion, love is more than just the action. However, if one feels all kinds of warm, fuzzy feelings towards God, but it doesn’t result in a change of actions, then that isn’t love either.

Contemplate what it means to “love God”. I’ve been reading The Imitation of Christ to my high school students (I loooove not teaching in public schools!) and we’ve been discussing “love”, and how a lot of Christians get it backwards. Some seem to think that we can just conjure up feelings/emotions, and then we’ll want to act in certain ways. I think they’re beginning to understand that if we act in certain ways, that IS love, and then feelings naturally follow…which lead to it being really easy (relatively) to keep loving…. (I’m also in premarital counseling right now, and this is an apt lesson….;)

I’m praying for this every night.