In Luke 10, starting in verse 25, a man asks Jesus, “Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” (Can you imagine to be able to actually physically walk up to Jesus and ask Him a question that you’ve been wondering about? Wow.) Jesus responds, “What is written in the Law? How do you read it?” (Kind of like when a teacher responds, “Well, what did the textbook say?”) The man who had been wondering, a teacher of the law, answers “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind; and, Love your neighbor as yourself.” Jesus says, “You have answered correctly. Do this and you will live.”

Welcome to the Set Apart Hearts series on the heart. What are we supposed to do with our heart? If we don’t know anything about the heart, we can’t really set apart our hearts for Him, now can we?

Well, one of the first things we need to understand about our heart – the true us, deep on the inside – is that we need to LOVE the Lord our God with ALL of it. Notice with me that the FIRST commandment he lists is to love the Lord with all of your heart. It’s almost like in order to love God with all your soul, all your strength, and your entire mind, you first have to love Him with all of your heart. It’s kind of like a prerequisite.

Why is that? Well, I bet you have heard someone say (or said yourself) “Wow, they just put their heart into that” – whether it be a sports performance, a musical performance, or even a relationship. What do we mean when we say that? If your heart is in something, you’re all in. You’re dedicated, sold out, you want this thing to work, you try your hardest – and it’s more than simply something we have to do. It’s something we want to do. If our heart is in something, we don’t give up during the hard times. We stick it out, because we really, really care about something.

If we love the Lord with all of our heart, our actions will follow. We will really care about serving Him, loving Him, and pleasing Him. The word “heart” is mentioned in the Bible 743 times in a variety of contexts. Our heart represents our will, our desires, our wants, the deep, deep inner us. (But more about what our heart is from Christine on Friday.)

We are told in the Bible that when we seek God with our whole heart, we will find Him. And when we stray, God wants us to return to Him with all of our heart. Think about a relationship for a moment. When a man tells a woman, “I love you with all of my heart,” what does that mean to us? I think, at least for me, it’s a little bit easier to think about it in a familiar context. From that statement, if he really meant it, I would know he really cares deeply about that girl, he wants what she wants, he loves her so deep in his inner self that he would do anything for her. He’s sold out to that relationship. It’s the same in our relationship with God!

God does not want to be fit in to our schedules. He does not want to be a “part” of our lives, just like my dog is a part of my life, and volleyball is a part of my life. He wants to BE our Life. Our Source of joy, satisfaction, the One we run to when our hearts are broken, the One we talk about to our friends because He’s done something cool in our lives, the One we like to spend time with.

He really wants us to love Him with all of our hearts. This all goes back to the fact that God did NOT create us to be robots. We have free will so we can choose to love and serve Him.

Luke 21:1-4 teaches us an important lesson: “As he looked up, Jesus saw the rich putting their gifts in the temple treasury. He also saw a poor widow put in two very small copper coins. ‘I tell you the truth,’ he said, ‘this poor widow has put in more than all the others. All these people gave their gifts out of their wealth; but she out of her poverty put in all she had to live on.’”

Jesus said that the woman gave more because of what was in her heart (she gave all that she had). It’s not about quantity, but quality. Is your heart really in your service toward God? In Joel 2:13, the Bible tells the people of God to “Rend your heart and not your garments.” He wants the heart! Amazing that the God of the universe wants us to love Him.

Imagine if a husband and wife simply did their spousal duties because they had to (spousal! Can you believe that’s a word? I looked it up). They served their spouse and did it well, but their heart was not in it. That relationship would be a rather sad one – if there’s no love from the heart to back up actions, everything essentially means nothing.

Here are very true lyrics from Jason Gray’s song, “More like Falling in Love” –

Give me rules, I will break them.

Give me lines, I will cross them.

I need more than a truth to believe.

I need a Truth that lives, moves, and breathes, to sweep me off my feet.

It’s gotta be more like falling in love, than something to believe in.

More like losing my heart, than giving my allegiance.

Caught up, called out … it’s like I’m falling in love.

Give me words, I’ll misuse them.

Obligations, I’ll misplace them.

Cause all religion ever made of me was a sinner with a stone tied to my feet. It never set me free.

…It was love that made me a believer, in more than a name, a faith, a creed.

Falling in love with Jesus brought the change in me.

You can’t fake this kind of love. It has to be from the heart. Just going to church, reading the Bible, trying to follow all the rules – it doesn’t cut it. Only loving Him with all of our hearts. Let’s love the Lord of the universe, who died to bring us freedom and fellowship with Him, with ALL of our heart, and simply POUR into our relationship with Him. It can only bring benefits and blessings that we cannot even imagine.