Loving God With All Your Strength

Today we come to the last of the four aspects of what it means to love God. Loving him with all your strength suggests loving him with all your energy, with your best effort, with all your physical ability.

We say that love is more than an emotion. It's more than a feeling.

Love is also is more than a decision. It's more than making the right choices. It's not just saying, "I do."

Love means actually doing something!

1 John 3:18 (NIV)

Love means work! Hard work! It means sweat! It means making an effort and paying a cost.

Love means commitment—total commitment—laying it all on the line! Love means sacrifice.

Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. (Deut 6:5, NIV)

Loving God with all your strength means to...

1. Love God with all you've got.

Strength here in NASB is might. The Hebrew (meh-ode) means: "exceedingly, much; might, force; abundance, muchness; greatly, to a great degree, with muchness."

Sometimes it's translated as abundantly, diligently, exceedingly, excessive, extremely, richly, and utterly, among others.

...all your resources. [Complete Jewish Bible]

...love him with all that's in you, love him with all you've got! [MSG]

In other words: Loving God with all our might and all our strength means we should love him "with muchness"—with "great abundance": that is, excessively, extravagantly, richly, lavishly, even wastefully. Dare we say "love God with reckless abandon"?   

The most important commandment says that we are to love God with all we've got—holding nothing back! We're to love him "with muchness"—with excessive, extravagant, reckless abandon.

If you've ever played sports, there's a pretty good chance that you've heard a coach at one time or another say, "I want 110 percent. Give it everything you've got! Leave it all on the field."

When we've loved the Lord with extravagance and reckless abandon, we won't have anything left over. He will have all we've got. He will have all of us.

   I'll never forget a story I heard when I was a teenager. It was told by Bobby Richardson, whom some of you old-timers will remember played second base for the New York Yankees back in the 50s and 60s. He was also a Christian and a national leader for the Fellowship of Christian Athletes.
He told about a long-distance runner who ran the race of his life. He entered the stadium well ahead of the pack, but it was clear he was hurting. He stumbled and fell several times as he circled the track. Then, as he approached the finish, he fell on last time. He tried to get up, but he couldn't. So he pulled himself along, crawling toward the line. He managed to pull himself across the line before he collapsed and passed out.
He gave everything! He left it all out on the track! He had nothing left to give. That's a picture of loving the Lord with all your physical energy and strength. Another way you could say it is to...

Loving God with all your strength means...

2. Waste yourself for God.

We don't like the idea of wastefulness. We're trained to avoid waste. We want to conserve energy, not waste it. Green is in; waste is out. We want to recycle, not recklessly throw things away. We are taught to be responsible—to save, not waste.

Yet, the Bible says we should love God extravagantly and excessively. To love God "with muchness" means that we will waste ourselves for him.

Being wasteful can mean a couple of things:

 (a) When we're wasteful, we don't think about the cost. Money is no object to those who are wasteful people!

 (b) When we're wasteful, we don't care about the consequences of our actions! It's not just finances—being wasteful takes our time, drains our resources, and makes us work harder.

That describes a lot of people who are in love! Young lovers can be very wasteful. Often they don't think about the cost or care about the consequences. They go with their heart instead of their head.

Sharon Naylor, author of 35 books on weddings, says that the average amount spent on a wedding by couples in the US is $20,398. She says couples typically plan to spend about half that amount. So why do they go over budget? Because they go with their heart; they don't think; they don't care about the consequences. [http://www.costofwedding.com/ ]

   When it comes to managing your bank account, wastefulness is not a good thing. We need to think carefully about how we spend our money. It's not good to waste our resources.

But on the other hand, if you want to say, "I love you," you have to be careful you're not so overly cautious that the message doesn't get through. A stingy, selfish, inconsiderate miser may have trouble convincing his lady that he really cares about her.

A good rule of thumb is: be careful and frugal about spending on yourself; but be liberal and generous when it comes to sharing yourself with others. Because real love needs to be expressed in wasteful terms—where we don't think about ourselves or care about the consequences, where we lay down our lives for another, where we sacrifice our time and energy for love.

Patricia McGerr wrote (in 1965) about her experiences in the Pacific islands. Her story was made into a movie in 1969. An article about it also appeared in the Feb, 1988 issue of Reader's Digest.
Some of you may have heard her story about Johnny Lingo, well-known in the islands as the best trader and shrewdest dealer around. He knew how to drive a hard bargain. But the islanders all knew about the time when old Sam Karoo cheated Johnny Lingo and got the better of him.
Sam had a daughter named Sarita—and she was so plain and skinny and shy that Sam was afraid he would never be able to marry her off at all, much less get a decent bride-price for her. The custom in the islands was that a young man would negotiate a price for his wife, bargaining with her father. Two or three cows would buy a fair-to-middling wife. Four or five cows would be top price for the most beautiful and hard-working wife.
That's why everyone was so surprised that Johnny Lingo—the sharpest trader around—didn't bargain at all! He just started off the negotiations by offering eight cows for his wife! No one could figure out why he would pay so much for such a plain, almost homely wife. Even Sam Karoo was amazed.
Patricia McGerr wrote that after she heard the story, she traveled to the nearby island of Nurabandi to meet Johnny Lingo and his wife, Sarita. But she didn't see a plain, skinny, shy woman. She didn't see a less than average, one-cow wife. Instead she saw a beautiful woman, elegant, confident, poised. Johnny Lingo noticed that Patricia was perplexed, so he explained.
"Do you ever think," he asked, "what it must mean to a woman to know that her husband has settled on the lowest price for which she can be bought? Later, when the women talk, they boast of what their husbands paid for them. One says four cows, another maybe six. How does she feel, the woman who was sold for one or two? This could not happen to my Sarita," he said.
Because of love, Johnny Lingo paid top price. Love made him waste his herd of cows. He wanted to give his Sarita the gift of knowing she was not just a 1-cow wife, or even a 4- or 5-cow wife. Because of love, Johnny Lingo made her an 8-cow wife!

Love—real love—will be extravagant. Do we dare to love God excessively? Extravagantly? Do we dare to love God wastefully? If we're going to love God with all our strength—with extravagance—then we will learn to waste our love on him.

Jesus said, "Lose your life for my sake." I'm just wondering. Do you think this could mean, "Waste your life for me"?

*The Bible tells us about two people who were wasteful and extravagant. Both acted impetuously—neither seemed to think about the consequences of their actions. Both were careless about how they handled their resources. Both were reckless and irresponsible, spending everything they had.

One, however, spent all he had on himself—for his own pleasure. The other poured out what she had as an expression of her love for God.

The first (in Luke 15:11-32) was the "prodigal" son, who wasted his inheritance on himself, spending his money on prostitutes and wild living.

(Note that "prodigal" means "wastefully or recklessly extravagant." We typically think "prodigal" means "sinful" or "rebellious" or "lost," but it really means "given to wasteful luxury or extravagance.")

How many people waste the Father's blessings? They spend themselves chasing the "good life," enjoying the things of the world. They waste themselves trying to impress people and living in the fast lane. They waste the good things God gives them.

Resources, abilities, opportunities, and talents meant to be used for eternity are wasted on temporal matters. They waste their spiritual inheritance on wild living, chasing after material pleasure.

The prodigal son wasted everything. When finally he had nothing left, brought so low that the only job he could find was working with pigs, and so hungry and starving he wanted eat the food for the hogs—finally he came to his senses.

He decided it would be better to be a servant in his father's house. So he went home, sorrowful and repentant. He fell down before his father, humbled himself, and confessed that he was not worthy to be called his son. "Let me be your servant," he pleaded.

The prodigal son—the wasteful son—went from wasting his father's blessings on himself to wasting himself to bless his father. Loving God with all your strength means to waste yourself for him.

The other story of waste and extravagance is of a woman.

Mark 14:3-6 (NLT)

Some of the guests became furious among themselves. “That’s criminal! A sheer waste! This perfume could have been sold for well over a year’s wages and handed out to the poor.” Mark 14:4-5 (Message)

The people standing around saw what she did, and they said, "What a waste!" Jesus saw what she did and said, "She has done a beautiful thing to me."

What she did was wasteful, but she did it out of love for the Lord. True love—strong love—pours itself out in extravagant, wasteful ways!

To love the Lord with all your strength means to pour yourself out for God. It means to love him extravagantly, excessively, wastefully.

   If you're going to waste anything, waste it on God. If you're going to be extravagant, be extravagant for God! Pour out your resources on God. Give your abilities and talents to God. Paul wrote:

2 Tim 4:6 (NIV) -Paul poured himself out.

Pour yourself out. Love God with all your strength by spending yourself for him—by surrendering your life to God! Waste your life on him.

Next week: The second most important commandment—and why if you don't get it right, you won't get the most important commandment right either.