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PROGRAM D-8195
What is the most important thing that every Christian should do? For the Christian, the most important priority of our lives should be to love God with all our heart, and then to love others as we love ourselves. Jesus set those priorities for us.
Are you loving God with all your heart, or is there some part of your heart that doesn’t love God? The Psalmist prayed, “Search me, O God, and know my heart” (Psalm 139:23). That’s a prayer we all need to pray, asking God to reveal any part of our heart that doesn’t love him.
For example, God may reveal to you a part of your heart that is filled with bitterness—perhaps because of wrongs done to you. As yet, you’ve never confessed that bitterness; you haven’t been willing to let go of it and trust that God will take care of those who have wronged you.
Maybe there’s a part of your heart that is filled with pride—you have never confessed that pride as sin and humbled yourself before God. With pride in our heart, we can’t love God with all our heart.
Is there a place in your heart that is filled with jealousy and envy? Do you secretly feel as though God has short-changed you and you deserve better than you have? That’s a part of your heart that doesn’t love God.
When you look at it this way, you realize that loving God with all your heart is not a matter of intensity—how fervently and passionately you love God—but rather how unreservedly and unrestrictively you love God. Does God have every part of your heart or are there places you’ve not yet relinquished to him? God is not asking us to try to work up more intense feelings toward him, but rather to give him every part of our heart. That should be the ruthless priority of our lives—the one thing we will not put at risk.