Focus: My Brain Too

Text: Dt.6:5

"And thou shalt love the LORD thy God with ALL thine HEART, and with ALL thy SOUL, and with ALL thy MIGHT."

God always makes demands of his people, and it is important to know that His demands are always for our own good or benefits.

He demands that we love him with all we've got. And God is not demanding love from us because He is starving of love. No, not at all! John says that God is love, and as you may know, love always requires another or the other. That is why in the Godhead we have God the Father, God the Son, and, God the Holy Spirit - three members of the Godhead. Love requires more than one person to work or to become a reality. The Lord Jesus says in His prayer to the Father, "That the world may know that thou…hast loved them, as thou hast loved me… that the love wherewith thou hast loved me may be in them, and I in them" - Jh.17:23,26. You see, the members of the Godhead were loving each other even before man came into existence. Now they are sharing that love with us. So you can see that God is not in need or starving of love. He simply demands from us the love He gives us - that very love which the Holy Spirit has poured into our hearts. The indwelling Spirit of God in us is the very fountain of love - Rom.5:5. We are saturated and flooded with the love of God. The love is intended to flow out to others as it flows into us. We are channels of God's love. His love for us has depth and height, breadth and length.

In Dt.6:5, Moses declares that we love the Lord with all our heart, soul, and might. But in Mk.12:30, a fourth word is added - 'mind,' and in verse 33, it is called 'understanding'.

The reason for the addition being that the Hebrews have no word for 'mind' in their language or vocabulary, but the Greeks do have.

True religion is not devoid of the human brain. Our Christian faith is not all heart and no mind. We must bring our mind or brain into loving God. The mind is the thinking part of us. If we think of loving God, then we'll find ourselves really loving Him. What we think is expressed in what we do. Love indeed is first a creed. Creed should result in conduct. To love God, we must avoid the ignorance of a slave and welcome the understanding of a son. Devote your brain or mind to loving and serving God. It is a divine imperative that we put our brains into our religion. Amen.

by Bishop Moses E. Peter