40 Days of Love – Day 3

Love God With All Your Heart

    The devotion began with an interesting point and an important distinction. Knowing and feeling are not sufficient for life change. Intellectual assent or the "big time" tingles are simply not sufficient to bring about real life change. To have life change requires that we put out faith into practice. This involves our wills, our behaviors. Too often people mistake knowing and feeling for a genuine experience with the Lord. I certainly want those to be part but without the exercise of our faith in new behaviors then we are left with empty and shallow and temporary experiences.
    The heart we are talking about is not the blood pump in out chests but rather the control center of our emotions. Why are we so afraid to show our emotions in relation to our faith? I see fans get all worked up at sporting events – not afraid to show their emotions, they wear their school colors and cheer and cheer loudly. At NASCAR it seems that everyone is wearing something to let you know their favorite driver or make of car. I think we have fallen prey to the notion that to express our emotions is to somehow be intellectually dishonest or suspect, to be factually weak, or just downright ignorant. God forbid that we would ever get excited about Jesus and actually tell someone about our relationship with Him. After all isn't it the really smart seminary professors who have this all figured out? Not really. I cherish my seminary education and the time I spent with professors who loved the Lord and challenged me to learn as much as I could.
    In 1972 Dr. Earl Radmacher, president of what was then Western Conservative Baptist Seminary, gave me some advice about my education that I will never forget. He said, "Scholarship without enthusiasm leads to stagnation but enthusiasm without scholarship leads to fanaticism." You must develop both scholarship and enthusiasm. It was that advice that prompted me to go on to seminary and to continue the learning process through the years. This learning must be accompanied by continual attention to enthusiasm. As a college student there was a song that went something like this, "Get all excited, Go tell everybody that Jesus Christ is Lord."

    Today we are encouraged to love God with all our hearts, with all our emotion. I think it is a good suggestion to express yourself to God out loud. Give voice to your thoughts. Talk to your friend, Jesus. So, today I will pray out loud and express my feelings to the Lord. When I am honest about my emotions then the Lord has a chance to mold them and change them. When I am just "blowing smoke" with the Lord and telling Him what I think He wants to hear or what I think I should say, when I am not honest whit him or myself, I thwart God's opportunity to mold and change me. Today I will be honest about my feelings when I pray and anxious to see Him work in my life.

How will you express yourself to God today?