Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. (Mark 12:30)
Because we were made in the image of God (Genesis 1:27), and God is Love (1 John 4:8), it follows that we have been hardwired for love. It is impossible for us to not love; we are lovers by nature. Our minds were designed to think about love. Our hearts were designed to long for love. And all of this was designed to keep us living in an intimate, personal, loving relationship with our God.
God hardwired us to love Him supremely because He knew that is the only way we will satisfy the deepest need of our hearts. We were made by God and we were made for God, and only when God is on the throne of our lives do we experience the soul-satisfying, worship-stimulating, heart-sustaining love we are hardwired for.
But there is a problem, and you probably know what that problem is. Adam and Eve turned away from God and chose to love themselves more than God. You and I inherited their treacherous sin nature, and we do the very same thing. Instead of loving God, we give our love to things smaller than God. We love people more than we love God. We love our stuff more than we love God. We love ourselves more than we love God. In essence, we exchange the love of our Creator for the love of His creation. And when we come to the end of all that loving, there is little — if any –love left for God. This is spiritual adultery. It is also called disordered love: we have allowed someone or something to sit on the throne of our lives that is vastly and infinitely inferior to the One who sits on His throne in heaven.
If we are to reestablish the holy hardwiring needed to love God according to our divine design, we must be in a right relationship with Jesus. When we acknowledge that we are sinners in need of a Savior and surrender control of our lives to Christ, we will be brought back into the right relationship with God that we were created to enjoy.
Remember, we love because He first loved us (1 John 4:19). With Jesus as our Lord and Savior, we have, once again, the capacity to love God above everything else. May this be the confession of our lives!
This is the Gospel. This is grace for your race. NEVER FORGET THAT . . . AMEN!
Grace for the Race 