Transforming the hearts of man…

Fighting for the Heart of the Few...

An All Heart

Deuteronomy 6:5 (New International Version)
“Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.”

Four times in the Bible you will find this passage.  The first is found in the above passage and then again in the gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke.  This week we are going to look at what I am calling an “All” heart!  

These days there are not much “All” anything.  Watch the news at night.  There are reposts on corporate crime, political corruption, domestic violence and the like.  From which we can conclude the only “All” is all self centered and self focused.  

However, this is not what the Israelites are being instructed to do.  Read this again and allow the words to pierce your mind.  “Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.”  To me, it is only reasonable that the LORD is asking the Israelites to love Him with their All!  He was the one who lead them out of captivity, provided for the day and night and displayed His majesty and wonder before their very eyes.  

Four times in scripture this passage is used!  I want to study this since it’s the first mention of this string of words.  In doing so, I find in Deuteronomy chapter five where God had met with Moses and gave him the Ten Commandments.  I did a complete Bible Study on the passage from the gospel of Mark titled, “The Greatest Commandment, A Living Reality.”  We spent a year breaking this apart and applying it to our daily lives.  We do not have the time or space to do that here.  However, one thought I want to explore is this:  In order to have an All heart, completely saturated with the LORD, the LORD must be our heart’s priority.  That means the LORD must be in our everything.  He’s in our waking up, our quiet times, our working times, both Christian and secular, our attitudes, our recreation, our family times and in our “All” times.  

In order for this to happen we must follow His commands.  For when we do there is nothing else left, we’ve put our all into this relationship with our LORD.  I suppose an “All” heart individual would be one that the world would look at and not be able to determine where the individual person began and God ended.  Can you imagine?  That would be an “All” relationship that would impact a lost and hurting world in a God-sized fashion.  

Does that describe you?  I have to be real and say, “No.”  But I want it to.  I think most of us would have to honestly quote the verse with words like these:

“I love the LORD God with most of my heart, some of my soul and a sliver of my strength.”  Do you agree?  

However, I find hope and strength in knowing that the process in which one obtains the “All” heart is exactly that, a process.  It is a journey that takes a lifetime to achieve.  I praise God we serve a God that is so in love with us that He willingly loves us on this journey.  What a journey it is, an “All” journey that leads us to an intimate personal relationship with the One and Only!  

My prayer for each of you is that nothing would stand in your way of having an “All” heart.

Join with me praising God for and Praying for the following:

1. Pray that we would be individuals making up the body of Christ that are purposefully willing to surrender that portion(s) of our hearts that prevent us from having an “All” heart.
2. Pray for the young men that we are ministering to on a weekly basis.  Pray for their hearts, souls, minds and strength to surrender to God and live fully for Him.
3. Pray for the PHM leadership team.  Pray for us as we balance marriage, family’s and careers.  Pray for balance, focus and a common sense of direction as we following what God has given us.
4. Pray for the body of believers in which we each worship.  If there were ever a time for an “All” heart, it is now.
5. Pray for each other.  I know standing the gap for PHM is tough prayer work.  I very much appreciate your role in this ministry.  Hold each other up so none of us grow weary of our callings.
6. Continue to pray for our upcoming leadership retreat.  It is challenging to find a time in which we can all set aside for such an event.  

Thank you so much for your faithfulness to PureHeart Ministries.

Sharing from the Heart,

Steve