With Your Whole Heart

Oh how I love your law! It is my meditation all the day. Psalm 119:97 Man, is that whole-hearted love or what?  I pray that verse frequently, and I keep hoping that one of these times it will feel sincere!  Because the fact is that my love for God’s law is not as strong as all that.  While his words may briefly come to mind from time to time, that hardly qualifies as meditation. And it certainly is not “all the day”. That reminds me again of what Bishop Ryle said about the zealous man, that he sees one thing, he cares for one thing, he lives for one thing, he is swallowed-up in one thing—and that one thing is to please God. The attraction I find in that quote is its simplicity.  Instead of having thousands of thoughts racing through my mind each day, instead of charging down rabbit trails in pursuit of distractions, instead of seeking escape from threats both real and imagined, instead of getting so caught up in the to do list that God and his word are far from my mind, I woul

The White Horse Inn Facebook page shared a 2016  article on five ways to love God with our mind. Since it is pertinent to my blog topic, I decided to share it too.  One line that stood out to me was this: We must love learning for the sake of loving God better. Those of you who know me well are probably not surprised that I would pick that out, nerdy as I am.  But what I really need is to pay attention to the line immediately following: Of course, a trap is to love learning and never get around to loving God. Because we live in a culture that emphasizes feelings, we tend to hear the command to love God in terms of emotion, affection, and passion. That is all good and right, and we have talked here about being a zealous Christian. But this call to love God is not just about whipping up our feelings. It is also implicitly a call to know him. And we know him through the reading, teaching, and preaching of his Word. Do you come to church hungry to see God and learn about him? Do