How to love God with all of your Heart, Soul, Mind, and Strength (Probably not how you think!)

[0:00] Well done, good and faithful servant. I don't know a single follower of Jesus that does not want to hear that when they are standing face to face before the Father at the end of their life. The problem is we've picked up a lot of really weird, unscriptural, unbiblical ideas about what is required for that day to look that way. We rightly have an understanding that we're supposed to give every second of our lives to God first and give God the first and the best that we have. But what in the world does that look like in practice? It gets worse because we have some ideas that are down so deep in in our understanding of what we think that the Bible is talking about that we really put ourselves in a position to not understand it even worse when we actually read other verses that are saying things that aren't so clear and obvious. It's even worse because if we misinterpret just a few of these things really far back on the stream, then other biblical passages which mean one

[0:49] thing will seem to mean another thing downstream of those wrong assumptions. So, I'm going to open up I'm going to open up a whiteboard real quick and I'm going to show you a little bit about what I'm talking about because I think that it's going to help to clear up some of these misconceptions. It's going to help to explain some of what you need to be understanding in order to move forward in the Christian life and understand how to give God your best, how to put God first in your life, how to honor him, how to glorify him in the right way that includes your entire life, not just little snippets of it. So, let's have a look right now at the kind of priorities list that most believers tend to think that they have when it comes to ordering their Christian life. They think it goes like this. First place is God, right? Forgive my terrible handwriting. Second place, if you're a really if you're married or a really romantic person, you might say

[1:36] you know, your spouse. Go down the list and you got your kids in here. You might have church in there somewhere, right? And whether we think about church, you got your work. You got like an ellipsis of a million different things and then at the bottom you've got me, right? Not not six like infinity, okay? Make sense? So, that's the that's the list that most people think that they're working with and that's what they think God wants from them. Is is God becomes the priority and then everything else is last, right? So, what are some problems with this way of thinking? What are some problems with this approach to life? Well, you are furthering what the Bible does not say, which is that sacred secular divide. So, a lot of people that I know still think, "Okay, my spiritual life is this thing and my secular life

[2:25] is this other thing over here." They'll say, "What God is really interested in me doing is reading my Bible, praying every day, going to the church services on Sunday morning and Sunday evening and the Wednesday night prayer study or Thursday night life groups or whatever it is and that's where I do my spiritual life. Oh, and the first hour of every day needs to be spent in prayer on my knees, spiritually showing love to God through prayer and Bible reading, right?" The problem is that then becomes what you think is the only stuff God is happy about. So, then you look at the rest of this list, your spouse, your kids, church doesn't count, work, yourself, and all of those are like lesser priorities or like concessions in your time. It's almost like if if if this list is true, then what God actually wants from you is for you to

[3:14] just spend only your time and your life being locked in your prayer closet, reading your Bible for 6, 7, 8 hours a day, not interacting with any of the other people that are in your life, you know, not the believers, but certainly not unbelievers, right? If this list is true, okay? I'd like to propose a different list. I would like to say that God is still number one, right? God comes first no matter what. But then, I've got a bulleted list under that first heading that goes spouse and kids and church and work and me, right? This makes a lot more sense of all those verses that say things like um, "No man ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it." Or all the one another statements in the Bible. Have you ever thought about the fact that some things in scripture are conspicuous

[4:03] by their absence? What do I mean by that? Is that if modern pastors had written the letter to the Romans or 1 Corinthians or Galatians or 1 and 2 Timothy, 1 and 2 Peter, that they would have said very different things. If you ask your average pastor what they would say is the most important thing for a church community to understand and to know, they would say, "You got to get out there and spread the gospel." Or you got to be in the word every day, every minute of every day. You got to fill your heart with scripture. And I'm obviously not opposed to these things. But what did Paul have to say? It can be really startling because if you're not paying very close attention, you will think that the Bible says, based on what people have said in commentaries or based on conversations you have with Christians or based on what you hear out of a sermon, pastor picks one or two verses and says what they think that it means and they'll go off on this big tangent that goes beyond what the verse

[4:50] actually says. But then you read for instance Ephesians 4, which is one of my favorite chapters in the entire Bible. Let's go over to the other screen and take a look at what it's saying here. That's not the kind of thing that you hear come out of Paul's pen. That's not the sort of thing that he ends up saying. Let's look at what he does say. Now, for those of you who are unfamiliar with the structure of Ephesians, the first three chapters are what is true in light of the good news about King Jesus and the restoration of all things and the unifica- unification of everything in heaven and earth in Christ, God's eternal plan. What is true of the church and you. And if Ephesians chapter 4 through 6 is how to live in light of what's true of you. Well, let's unpack this a little bit. I therefore, therefore is the first three chapters, because of God and all the good things that he's done and who he is and how wonderful he is, I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called. With all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing

[5:39] with one another in love. Okay, let's stop for a minute here. Walking worthy of the calling wherewith you've been called. That's Paul's thing here, right? Which sounds like our list, right? If I'm going to put my priorities in order, look, walking worthy obviously means putting God first, putting God in his rightful place, and obeying him as your king and ruler and authority in your life. But, what does that look like? What does that actually mean in practice? Look at how quickly Paul defaults to how you treat other people. Look at this. With all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body and one spirit, just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call. One Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all who is over all and through all

[6:26] and in all. He said the word one seven times. He's a Jewish guy, he can't get the number seven out of his blood, especially when he's talking about something that's perfect and godly. But, look at how the unity is focused here, okay? A unity between who? A believer in God or between believers and other believers and other people. The relationships that you have are how you show your love for God and you place him at the top of your priorities list by how you treat your spouse, how you treat your kids, how you show up to church, and I don't mean the building and the service, I mean the people that make up the local body of believers in your circle of influence. What do you do at work? How do you work? How do you treat yourself? How do you think about yourself? Those are all things that you do as part of how you love God. It's about to get real hairy. He just a

[7:14] little bit further down, he starts to tell you what the job is of the uh of the actual ministers, okay? So, this is something we're going to talk about later is this is topic of ecclesiology, what is the church? But, even in the church, Paul doesn't have this view of like clergy up here and laity down here passively receiving things. Listen to what he says. And he, that is God, gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers to equip the saints for the work of the ministry. Hold on. Did he say that he gave evangelists and apostles and prophets and pastor teachers to do the work of the ministry? No. He says to equip the saints to do the work of the ministry. What's the work of the ministry? Surely that would be Bible reading and prayer time and and preaching the gospel to the lost, right? That's surely what Paul means when he

[8:03] says the work of the ministry. No. The work of the ministry is the building up of the body of Christ until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness and deceitful schemes. Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love. Holy cow. I don't even have It would take several videos to unpack

[8:51] everything that's happening there. But nothing that's in there sounds like just the spiritual disciplines. I love the spiritual disciplines. I undergo them often. They're extraordinarily valuable. I wouldn't know about this passage if I didn't read my Bible, right? But what God has in mind is not that you put him first at the expense of everything else, with everything else that you could be doing in your life and all the other relationships you could be nurturing in your life to be scorned and shamed and set aside as though they're unimportant. The entire point of the gospel is that you with other believers now form one body. And it is your unity, your oneness. Remember how often he emphasized it in this passage. Your unity, your oneness, your mutual love and affection, which is proof of of love for God, and is a way in which you contribute your love to God both

[9:40] individually and corporately as the rest of the church. Now, what on earth does this have to do with eternity, right? That might be the questions on your mind. What on earth does this have to do about living our lives in light of eternity? Brothers and sisters, there are a lot of folks who have taught that the way that we will be going on in eternity is just reducible to singing to God in white robes forever. Pillars in the temple of our God and all that. No, that would be God at number one and everything else is wiped off the list. Only God. God from the beginning wanted partners to help him take the world someplace beautiful together. Partnering with him, in relationship with him, and with one another. We obviously sort of lost the script in Genesis 3 to an extent. That whole process got warped, that plan got sort of not delayed, but kind of deterred and broken and twisted a little bit. One major aspect of what

[10:28] Jesus wants for us in the new creation is that we return to that kind of living. Fully, completely, with no break in the chain. Where we're loving God every second of every day in our relationship with him directly, but also through the way that we do everything else. And in every circumstance giving gratitude and glory to the one who rescued us and gave us so many good gifts in the first place. And once again, the way that this almost always works in the New Testament is that the logic of how you're supposed to live today is grounded in the way that you'll be living in that day. So, today don't feel bad about showing Christ-like love to your spouse. Don't think that you're somehow missing your priorities if you're spending time with your kids or under- just understand that those things are part of how you love God and how you bring him glory and how you bring him

[11:16] honor. Even in what you do for work, regardless of whether you think that you're supposed to be a professional clergy person or a missionary or an evangelist. Love God through what you do. Let me know, was this helpful? I understand that this is something that's very confusing for a lot of people. We've been taught a a of different things. So, if you have anything to say or anything to add, I'd love to hear about it down in the comments. And as always, give this video a like, subscribe, and hit the notification bell so that whenever I come out with another video, you're ready for it. And if you want to learn more about this kind of way of life, I would love to talk to you more about it. You can visit me at my website at theoverlap.life, where you can grab a copy of the book, reach out, ask us a question, suggest video ideas, find all kinds of other resources, and really just generally hang out with us. It'd be a great time.