What does it mean to love God with your whole soul? Let’s dig into the Hebrew word soul to have a deeper understanding of how we are to authentically love God.
When I was in high school, I took Spanish as an elective for all four years. And when I went to college, I continued to take Spanish. In retrospect, I really wish these institutions of learning would have taught me Hebrew. In my adult life, learning Hebrew has helped me far more than any other course of higher learning. Here’s why…
Hebrew is a very specific, concrete, and deep language. Most of the Old Testament of the Bible is written in Hebrew. And if you can understand even just a little bit of Hebrew, you can unlock great meaning in the Bible’s Holy words.
The Shema
Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. Deut 6:4-9
This scripture was part of a prayer Jesus would have prayed every day, probably in the morning and evening. It is part of a bigger prayer called the Shema (pronounced sh-mah’), a call-to-action, an ancient prayer of commitment to follow the Lord,
Jesus prayed the words above and taught them and called them the ‘greatest commandment (Mark 12:28-30). But what does it mean to “love God with all of our soul’? If Jesus said that this was the greatest commandment, isn’t it important to know, really know, what it means?
What Is One’s Soul
We can have a deeper understanding of this scripture if we look at the meaning of the word soul. The soul is nephesh in Hebrew. This word, when boiled down to its basic core, means LIFE!
“Love the Lord with your whole soul” means we should love the Lord with our lives, moment by moment, for our whole lives. Not just on Sundays during church, not just on Christmas and Easter, and not just when wefeellike it!
Loving the Lord with all our soul means loving the Lord on good days, on bad days, and on all days in between. It means having an eternal love affair with Him because of his extravagant love for us!
Loving God with all our life is not a wishy-washy love. It is not controlled by feelings. It is a love born out of a decision and a choice. It is a commitment to love God with and in every part of our lives!
Our Deepest Calling
Jesus is calling us to love God with our life…
LOVE THE LORD WITH ALL YOUR HEART AND WITH ALL YOUR SOUL AND WITH ALL YOUR STRENGTH AND WITH ALL YOUR MIND. Luke 10:27
Every moment of every day and in every circ*mstance! Isn’t that just what Jesus did? He loved God and us with His whole life!
CLICK HERE TO sAVE THIS POST TO PINTEREST!
Have a blessed Sunday!
