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by Lilly Hunter
February is marked by Valentine’s Day, and the evidence of it is already in every store that I go in. Flowers in stores, heart candy in gas stations- our celebration of love is unavoidable.
All the expressions of love remind me of the theme of the upcoming D-Now weekend for our teens. This year our study is called Undivided, and it centers around what it truly would look like to love God with our whole heart. This study isn’t just good for the youth- I think we can all benefit from honestly evaluating our lives and our love for God.
Jesus says that the greatest commandment in the Bible is this:
“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.” (Matthew 22:37)
Essentially, loving God with our whole being and all of our resources fulfills the entire law. But more than a desire to be obedient, our love for God is driven by his qualities. He is the creator and sustainer of the universe, he is the same yesterday, today, and forever. We serve a God that describes himself as “compassionate and gracious... slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love” (Exodus 34:6). The more we experience God, the more we will love Him simply because of who He is.
So the call of the Bible is to experience God daily and fully.
To do so, we have to be undivided in our focus. We have to be attentive in our reading, our praying, and our seeking of the will of God. To know Him is to love Him, and God has revealed himself to his people through his Word and continues to reveal himself through his people.
My prayer for our church and myself this month is that as we celebrate love we take time to look at our love for the Lord. Do we love him as much as we love our spouse? Our possessions? Or work? Our kids?
We serve a God that is so much more worthy of our love than all of these things combined. Seek Him and discover depths of love untold.“