Loving God with All Your Heart and with All Your Mind
I've selected two items from the greatest command, our hearts and our minds, because of the constant tension between the desires of our hearts and decisions of our mind; between the heart and the head. This tension dates to the garden of Eden in its mythical narrative. Mythical? Genesis 2 & 3 is about real people in a real place at an actual time in history, but it tells a story that is true of people throughout history, especially in the Bible narrative about God and his people. After creating humans as male and female in his image, God placed them in the garden to live in harmony with each other and communion with Himself. He gave them (1) vocation to dress and keep the garden, (2) permission to enjoy all the pleasant and good things he had created, and (3) prohibition not to eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Then enters the crafty adversary who suggests that eating the tree of knowledge is an option, not a forbidden. He focuses the attention of that couple on the desires of their heart, not on decision of their mind to honor God as God. You know the rest of the story. The Lord saw that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually ... and it grieved Him to his heart (Gn. 6:5-6).
That story is there at the giving of the greatest command (Dt. 6-11). It is seen in the prophecy of Hosea with its tension between worship of God or Baal (2:5-9; 4:12-13). But the story changes when God sends Jesus into this kind of world. From his temptation in the wilderness to his prayer in another garden Jesus was faithful to the will of his Father, not to the desires of his heart. His story is to become our story. But that tension between the heart and head remains today.
Many desires of our hearts are good. Some are questionable. They may come from culture, feelings, popularity, self-interests and perhaps from a “serpent.” When desires of our hearts threaten, our heads must be engaged >> love God with all our minds. Dig deeply into his word as fathers were to do with children when Israel was about to enter the land (Dt. 4:1-2; 6:4-6) and as Jesus did with his Father in the temptation (Mt. 4:4, 7, 10). I ask you to make practical applications.
Now may the God of peace sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of out Lord Jesus Christ (1 Thess. 5:23).
—Tom Yoakum