NewLife's Got Talent: With All Our Strength

Within our series on stewardship, we have focused on four areas these past weeks from the Great Commandment (Mark 12:30), where Jesus tells a scribe that the most important commandment is to “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.”

We broke these four elements down the past couple of weeks in order to study them. But to summarize the command, we are to love the Lord our God with all of the core of who we are and to the best of our ability.

Strength was our topic Sunday and we looked at several good examples of loving God with all of our strength (Abel, Hannah, David, Paul),  as well as some not so good examples (Cain, Saul, David). To further illustrate the idea of loving God to the best of our ability (or with all our strength), let’s look at what Paul wrote to the Thessalonians in his first letter to them. Specifically, let’s look at 4:1, “Finally, then brothers, we ask and urge you in the Lord Jesus, that as you received from us how you ought to walk and to please God, just as you are doing, that you do so more and more (ESV).” He taught them how to walk and how to please God. So the matter of how to do that is settled but then he also acknowledges something very important: they are living in ways that please God. That’s amazing! He knows they are already living that way and encourages them do so all the more. That’s a valuable lesson for us.

May we be living lives that are pleasing to God in Christ and are seeking to be transformed in our minds. Are you living in this way? If so, do so all the more! If not, then turn back to Jesus and move forward walking with Him! And then, do so all the more! As the author of Hebrews reminds us, let’s spur one another on to love and good deeds (10:24). That’s the help and accountability we need to love God through the Lord Jesus with all of our strength because God loved us so much and to the best of His ability that He sent His One and Only Son to rescue us from darkness and be brought into the glorious kingdom of His Beloved Son (Col. 1:13). Let’s continue to grow in Christ, all the more!  

Let’s stay strong in loving Him!
Pastor Andy  

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