Living in Increase (Part 2) - Increase in LoveSample

With All Your Heart

Over the next four days, Luke 10:27 will be a theme verse for us. We will discuss loving God with our heart, soul, strength, and mind. Today, we’ll discuss how to love God with all our hearts.

The word “heart” in this verse is the original Greek word kardia. We get the English words “cardiac” and “cardiologist” from this word. In all simplicity, kardia refers to our actual hearts. Kardia “denotes the center of all physical and spiritual life.” Without a heart, we cannot have life. The heart has a “never-ending workload,” providing “millions of gallons of blood to every part of the body” (Harvard Health Publishing, 2023). In one lifespan, the average human heart beats around 2.5 billion times (Harvard Health Publishing), and when the heart stops beating, physical life stops as well.

Just as the heart is the center of physical health, it is also the center of spiritual health. As you’ll see tomorrow, the heart also represents our soul, the seat of our “sensibilities, affections, emotions, desires, appetites, [and] passions.” However, whether physical life or spiritual life, the heart has one thing in common: it’s at the center.

Matthew 6:21 tells us that where we invest our treasure is where our hearts are. Our time, energy, and money are all valuable to us, and where we spend it directly correlates with what we see as the center of our lives.

We can love the Lord our God with all our hearts by keeping Him at the center of our physical and spiritual lives. As believers, our spiritual and physical lives should be one! As we make God the center of our day-to-day activities, we allow our spiritual life to enter our work, home, hobbies, friendships, and relationships.

Today, if you want to love God with all your heart, try putting Him at the center of all you do. Invest in your relationship with God. Whether emails, chores, phone calls, or errands, God wants to be a part of your life! Even more specifically, God wants to be the center of your life, and making Him the center is how we love Him with all our hearts!

Emily N. Green

Action Step: Write out all the tasks you have ahead of you today. Pray and invite God to be a part of these tasks. Ask Him to be in every part of your life!