Loving God With My Heart
It,
Consistent readers of the Main Thing know that I have some tendencies in the Autistic realm and grew up in a house determined to repress all feelings. Therefore, I especially had something to learn about loving God with my heart. I will convey that story below the Bible passages. It might help some readers to consider deeper what Jesus said.
30 Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’[a]
Note he quoted from Deuteronomy:
Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.
First, God could simply have said “Love the Lord your God.” However, He knew we needed more. Jesus even added one more element of mind. In college, I memorized this passage and mind and strength made a lot of sense to me. I ignored soul and heart.
Long, long ago, my first year as an army officer, I met a Christian family who home schooled, and the 17 year old daughter needed help with Higher Algebra. I said ok. From the first her beauty and gentle spirit captivated me. Her parents were thrilled. God was too. She and I were both too immature. My rationalism and rejection of emotion caused her to repress her emotions when near me. She could laugh with friends but not with me.
Loving God With My Heart Is a Big Question
My parent’s ‘gap’ in repressing emotions was they loved each other with their hearts, so unbeknownst to me, I needed emotion(which I had rejected all around me) from my girlfriend. She was naturally afraid to open her emotions with me. I could not understand. Furthermore, I was frustrated. I wrote the details of that here in God Gave me Life.
Rational, repressed me, wept and wept when I discovered I has lived a life far away from God. God wanted my heart more than I even wanted hers. It took years for me to find my emotions and learn to admire them in others, but the die was cast when I wept that day. A book called Inside Out by Crabb took me another step.
It Is a Path of a Lifetime
I am still learning about living with my heart as well as with the mind that I always follow. I sense that I am not the only guy who ignored his emotions especially at key moments.
God loved me with all he had. Surely, he loves us with heart as well as his mind. I need to as well.
To do that I need to know what I am feeling and be able to then see what God and others are feeling. Then, I need to care about mine and theirs. God made us as humans in possession of these emotions that he loves. Let’s connect with him, our families, and the world that God loves. See also Connecting and Vulnerability For God.
