Consuming Love – How do you do that?

Consuming Love – How do you do that?


He answered: “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.”
Luke 10:27 NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION

There is a book titled Hard Sayings of Jesus by F. F. Bruce. From what I have read about it, this verse is not addressed in Mr. Bruce’s book, and I sort of see why. That book is dedicated to dealing with cryptic statements from Jesus. But the above statement from Jesus is not so much hard to understand as it is hard to do. If I wrote such a book, I would call it: Hard Stuff That Jesus Wants Me to Do, But I Don’t Know How.

Jesus gives no instructions on how to love God with heart, soul, and strength, assuming that maybe His audience already knows how to do such a thing. But I am lost at how to pull this off. And I don’t even know exactly what a soul is, much less how to love at maximum capacity with it.

I am sure a better person can help me make sense of this verse, but to the best of my knowledge, I think this verse means that we should intimately know God and cherish those around us.

How does one intimately know God? Maybe it is sort of like finding out where God goes for evening walks, and then join in. Maybe it is like making a lunch date with God and sticking to it. Maybe we intimately know God when we sing songs to him in the car. I think knowing God happens when we scream at him in full throttle anger or when we go running to Him in tears. I think we grasp more of the father when we trust Him with our pain, failures and disappointment. I think we snuggle in with God when we sit with Him in silence and He gets to do all the talking. I’d like to think something intimate happens when we study His word, when we pray and when we serve others. I think we know God better when we live outside our comfort zones. When we step out a bit; it is an opportunity for Him to show up and be Himself. I think that time spent with God makes us just like Him. And when we are like Him, we can’t help but love our neighbor as ourselves.