The Art of Loving God: Our Thoughts.

“And behold, a lawyer stood up to put him to the test, saying, “Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” He said to him, “What is written in the Law? How do you read it?” And he answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.” And he said to him, “You have answered correctly; do this, and you will live.” -- Luke 10:25-28

For the past week, I have been reading the book The True Christian’s Love for the Unseen Christ by Thomas Vincent. The book has pricked at my heart, causing me to realize my own lack in love and passion toward the savior that I claim to live for.  When I think about Christ, how he is the radiance of the glory of God, the exact imprint of God’s nature, how he made purification for sins, how all things were created through him and for him, and how he loves us, I realize that I owe him all of myself… and even when I think that I am giving everything, I usually am not.

It is an art to love God. It is an art to take very part of my heart, my soul, my mind and my strength and give it to the God of the universe on a daily basis. It takes discipline to keep my hope set only in Him. It is work to love Jesus.

We are to love God with all of our heart, all of our soul, all of our mind, and all our strength. One of my greatest challenges is to love God with my entire mind. I know that I fall extremely short in this area; I lust, I pride, I worry, and I don’t meditate on God nearly as much as I want to.
After a little meditation, I identified three areas to evaluate our mental state of loving God:

1 - Our thoughts which are sinful in the sight of God
2 - The nature of our thoughts about God3 - The frequency of our thoughts about God

According to many of the old Christian writers that I enjoy, what we think about God, and how frequently we think about him determines a whole lot about us. To be honest, about six months ago I was in a place where I was constantly meditating on God and His word, and sinful thoughts were in remission because of it. (It was an absolutely marvelous place to be – completely in love with thinking of the Lord!) I attribute this to Philippians 4:4-9, which tells us to have prayer and thanksgiving instead of anxiety, and then the peace of God will guard our hearts and minds. When we are seeking to truly love God and follow his teachings, we have to fight to set our minds on Him – He is the only one who is wholly noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable, excellent and praiseworthy. When we set our minds on him, the lesser-thoughts begin to fade and the love of Christ fills our minds in a way that is so powerful that it cannot be described! I want that back! By the grace of God, when we seek Him and tell him that we want to love Him with our entire mind, he will provide us the strength and wisdom of how to get to that place.

Only to sit & think of God, Oh what a joy it is!To think the thought,
To breathe the Name,Earth has no higher bliss. -Frederick W. Faber