With All Your Heart, Mind, and Strength!

@gospels

A hymn-writer said:

"Weak is the effort of my heart,
And cold my warmest thought,
But when I see Thee as Thou art
I'll praise Thee as I ought."

It is hard without the Sacraments

We show love for God by showing love for fellow man. And even though we'd like to skip this part, God won't have it.

We are human, weak and flesh. We have to fight against evil.

We have to offer up our daily battles to God.

God bless you

gospels said:

Hello @OldWiseGuy Is it possible to have Jesus living in us and not love our fellow man? Can any man love others as they love themselves unless that man has Jesus living inside him?

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We can through ignorance.

Romans 10:1-3 King James Version (KJV)

10 Brethren, my heart's desire and prayer to God for Israel is, that they might be saved.

2 For I bear them record that they have a zeal of God, but not according to knowledge.

3 For they being ignorant of God's righteousness, and going about to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted themselves unto the righteousness of God.

gospels said:

When I asked, "Father, you commanded that we love you with all our heart, soul, and mind. But how can I ever love you with such love? Can any human ever be able to do that?"

Then the Lord said, "No man has ever loved me with all his heart, soul, and mind. Only My Son did. He loves me all His heart, soul, and mind, all the time. You cannot love me anymore unless you have My Son in your heart, soul, and mind. He that lives in you will do that for you. He loves me and I love Him back through your heart, soul, and mind."

Father loves and how much more does He love them in whom His Son is. I hope my this conversation with the Lord will help you in loving Him with all your heart, soul, and mind. God bless.

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Godly type Love is not instinctive for that would make it robotic and God cannot force His Love on you like a shotgun wedding with God holding the shotgun. It has to be the result of a free will choice and given totally unearned, undeserving, and unselfishly.

The only way I see for mature adults to initially obtain such a Love is by what Jesus taught us: “…he that is forgiven much Loves much…”, so Sin is shown to create an unbelievable huge debt, accepting God’s forgiveness of this huge unbelievable debt automatically creates an unbelievable huge Love (a Godly type Love).

It all sounds and is actually very easy, but in reality, people will almost do anything to avoid having to humble themselves to the point of accepting pure charity. People will believe this all happened back when they were baptized as a baby, or it is not their choice to be humble and accept charity, since God made that choice for them they could not even make the choice, they feel they can earn this Love through being good, pay God’s Love back by worshipping Him, they already have the Love somehow within them (it is instinctive), some do not think God could be that Loving to forgive them, or they have always been good so there is little for God to forgive.

The degree to which you understand how much you have been forgiven of and have humbled yourself in accepting God’s forgiveness, will determine your initial portion of God’s Love, which for me was small, but there was some Godly Love there. The good news is that Love can grow with use, so if you take the little Love you do have with the little faith you have and truly use it the Love can grow rapidly.