The Ancient Call to Love God
Deuteronomy 6:4-5 NKJV
4 “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one! 5 You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength.
“I love God.”
That’s something many Christians would say—but not always live out. We often get the emotional side of loving God right, but our actions don’t always match.
Do you ever struggle to love God properly?
Do you even know what that means?
What does it truly mean to love God?
This past Sunday, we unpacked this ancient prayer called the Shema. The purpose of this prayer was for God’s people not just to listen, but to obey. To hear—in Hebrew, shema—meant more than just sound waves hitting your ears. It meant to listen and respond.
If you have time, the Bible Project has a great breakdown of this prayer and its meaning:
👉 Watch here
The Shema invites us to love God. And if you’ve ever wondered how God wants to be loved, this prayer shows us:
“Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength.”
On Sunday, we broke each part of this down. Here’s a quick recap:
Heart – Your intellect, desires, and decisions. To love God with your affections, your longings, and the choices you make.
Soul: You WHOLE self. Every part of your body encompasses your soul. This is in stark contrast to what often the world derives as soul—as some ghost-like, immaterial part of us. God invites us to love Him with our whole embodied life.
Strength: The Hebrew word here is me’od, which literally means “muchness.” It’s not just your physical might, but your everything—your time, talent, resources, knowledge, energy, and experiences.
So God invites us to love God with everything that makes us us. Not a part of you, but your whole self.
I’ll be the first to admit—this is hard.
To bring every single part of me to the table?
Do you ever feel that tension?
Maybe loving God with your desires comes easy, but trusting Him with your decisions? Or with your resources? That can feel impossible when you already feel stretched thin.
But this is where love and trust go hand in hand.
It’s one thing to believe God is real—it’s another to trust Him.
Do you trust that YAHWEH has the best intentions for you?
Do you trust the invitation Jesus offers—to find life by giving Him your all?
If we’re honest, we’re all still learning how to trust Him with our whole lives.
But maybe the next step isn’t to figure it all out—it’s simply to obey the next thing God is asking of you.
Because often, loving God doesn’t start with doing everything.
It starts with doing the next right thing.
So take a moment to reflect today:
What area of your life feels hardest to trust God with?
What’s one step of obedience you sense God inviting you to take this week?
Go and do that.
That’s where love begins.
