Love your God with all your mind

Jesus said that the greatest commandment of all, the commandment that carries the most weight, is "Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength." It means loves God with your whole person, with all that you are.

We often hear that love is more than emotion, that it's an act of the will. This, I believe, is true. Sure, a husband and wife can fall out of love, but what they really mean is they don't "feel love" for one another like they used to. True love, God's kind of love, says you remain committed to your spouse and desire and do what is truly good for him or her. It's great when emotion and the will line up, but if emotion is gone for the moment (or however long), it matters not, at least with regard to the essence of love, which is an unwavering commitment to the highest good of another.

Now, to get to my main thought...

I have a thought tonight about loving God with my mind. I'm currently studying for my theology test and working on a big assignment. With what feels like a mountain of other things that require my time and attention, I don't feel like studying. I'm tired. This causes some dissonance in me because here I am studying, reflecting on, and learning about wonderful truths about God, things that in my heart bring me deep joy, and yet there is a feeling of dread about this task of studying for the test and completing assignments. So I started thinking about the greatest commandment to love God. Loving God with my mind is included in that command.

If love were only a feeling, I'd close the books, push back from my desk, and perhaps try to feel love toward God without this mental strain. But how can I feel love for someone unless I know something about them. True, to know someone is different from merely knowing things about them. But you can't truly know someone without knowing things about them. When it comes to loving God (as in all meaningful personal relationships) you need both. The two (knowing and knowing about) should not be separated. If we are to know God personally we must seek to understand the truth about him as he himself has revealed in the Scripture. The two are joined.

It's been wisely said before, "Theology without piety (my personal reverence for God) is sterile abstraction. Piety without theology is empty emotionalism."

I don't want the pressure of my studies to pour water on my fire for God. Rather, I want my studies to be gasoline for the fire, even if my emotions at the moment are not where I would like them to be, for true love involves commtiment of the will. Therefore, God help me, God help us, to love you with our minds, our hearts, our souls, our strength.