With All My Heart

I am so excited to blog today! The Online Bible Study started and let me tell you it has been AWESOME! On Thursday's they do what is called a blog hop. I picked the 1st topic! Our verse to meditate and pray over this week was from Deuteronomy 6:5 You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. This was from the ESV. Wow! What a powerful verse. I decided to give verse mapping a shot and let me tell all of you right now I am so glad I did! It took me on such an amazing journey and I dug so much deeper into God's word!
What I found just made sense to me and tied it all together. First I looked up this same verse in my NIV bible and it changed might to strength. So I looked up the definition of strength. Which by the way has multiple definitions but the one that spoke to me was the degree of intensity of a feeling or belief. Hmm...when something is intense I think of it being potent. So then I looked up the word potency: the power of something to affect the mind or body. Wow!! So going back to the verse I started looking at the words heart and soul. In Hebrew your heart was considered the seat of the mind so basically your heart=mind and after some searching determined that your soul=body. So that word potency just came alive to me on my page. Your heart and soul kind of intertwine. You can't have a heart(mind) without a soul(body) and you can't have a soul(body) without a heart(mind). Have I confused you yet? It just spoke volumes to me! Our heart is the most precious thing we have. So why shouldn't we love God with ALL of it. That brings me to the word love. Which is defined as an intense feeling of deep affection. There is that word intense again! God commanded His people to love Him above all else. It is God's desire for us to love him with total sincerity without reservation and with all our faculties.
So what does this verse mean to me? God commanded it. In fact in Matthew 22:37-38 Jesus tells the Pharisees that this is the Greatest Commandment. God said do it! And like Lysa said at the end of Chapter 1. There are six words that sum up the Old and New testament. Whatever God says do, DO IT!!!!  I believe if I can love the Lord my God with all my heart and with all my soul and with all my strength I will find myself saying #YestoGod when I didn't think I could. I am feeling beyond blessed to take this journey with an amazing group of women! I feel God working! I am tickled pink to see what the next 5 weeks hold!! Love all you guys and I am praying for you!