Devotional: Heart, Soul, Mind, and Strength
“Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.”-Mark 12:30
When you fall in love with someone, you start to think about them all the time, you go to extra lengths to please them and to be with them, and it becomes difficult to focus on other things. Essentially, you pour out everything you have to show that you love them.
When I read this Scripture, that’s the message that is conveyed to me. God commands us to love Him with every ounce of energy that we have. What I have wondered, however, is why doesn’t He just say, “Love the Lord your God with everything you have?” Why is there a distinction between those four words? The best route is to always go to the original language to have a more thorough grasp on their meanings.
Heart in Greek is kardia. It means your literal heart, but it also means “the center of all spiritual and physical life.” It also means the “middle, central, or inmost part of anything.” According to blueletterblue.org, it is the “seat of all your passions, desires, will, thoughts, affections, passions.” When we believe, we are given a new heart– one with new, godly desires.
Soul in Greek is psyche. It’s defined as the breath of life and your existence. It’s the essence of your being. It is the life that inhabits your body. It’s the “you” that Jesus saves from hell.
Mind in Greek is dianoia. It is defined as our “faculty of understanding, feeling, and desiring.” It is our way of thinking; it is our thoughts. You could say that our thoughts are driven by what is in our hearts. So, when we have a new heart from Christ, we are given a new way to think as we learn to renew our minds.
Strength in Greek is ischys. Its definition is “ability, force, strength, might.” It is also translated in other verses as “power.”
With these definitions in mind, how do we love God with all these areas of our being?
With our kardia, we love God by having proper motives and intentions that fuel our thoughts, actions, and speech.
Luke 6:45 expands on this idea: “The good person out of the good treasure of his heart produces good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure produces evil, for out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks.” What is in our hearts will be revealed in our actions.
Ezekiel 36:26 says, “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.” As believers, we now have the prophesied heart of flesh. It’s a soft heart that is attentive to God’s voice and willing to submit. It’s a heart that is softened in compassion and love. We love God with our hearts by desiring what He wants and choosing to submit to His will.
With our psyche, we love God by living and walking out His life in us.
John 15:13 uses the same word: “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” Jesus laid down His psyche for us so that we could have life (John 10:10). He gives us the fullness of life by indwelling us with His Spirit. Through that, we have the ability to live a life that is God-powered. As a result, we love God with our souls by sacrificing our lives for others out of love. We love God with our souls by choosing to live His way (by the Spirit), not our way (by the flesh).
With our dianoia, we love God by thinking His thoughts.
Philippians 4:8 says, “Finally, brethren, whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there is any virtue and if there is anything praiseworthy—meditate on these things.” We love God with our minds by focusing on things that fit in the categories listed above.
2 Corinthians 10:5 also tells us that “we demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.” We love God with our minds by making our thoughts obedient to Christ (submitting it to truth). If we have a worrisome thought, we catch it and replace it with “God says not to worry, but to pray about everything.” If we have a hateful thought, we catch it and replace it with Jesus saying, “Love your enemies.” This is why reading the Bible is essential– we renew our old thoughts by replacing them with Scriptural truth (Romans 12:2).
We also love God with our minds by making godly decisions. He gave us brains for a reason to be able to learn, to discern, and to choose wisdom over foolishness.
With our ischys, we love God by working with excellence in everything we do.
Colossians 3:23 tells us, “Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters…” No matter what God has called us to do, whether it is doing chores, working in a corporate job, or doing mundane work, we should do it with our best foot forward. We should work at it with all our strength. Like the analogy I used at the beginning, when we love someone, we are willing to do anything for them with all the strength and energy we have.
Also, we love God with our strength by utilizing the talents and abilities that He has given to us. 1 Peter 4:10-11 says, “God has given each of you some special abilities; be sure to use them to help each other…do it with all the strength and energy that God supplies so that God will be glorified through Jesus Christ…” In that verse, the same Greek word, ischys, is used for strength. We love God by serving others through our talents and actions, done with excellence.
In sum:
Heart = we love Him through submission to His will and desires.
Soul = we love Him through sacrificing our lives for Him and others.
Mind = we love Him through our thought-life and decisions.
Strength = we love Him through our actions and abilities.
Of course, this is just my interpretation from studying the words and the Scriptures they are used in, but hopefully this gives you some food for thought and something to pray about for further understanding. For reference, I used blueletterbible.org to study these words.
Take a moment: Have the desires of your heart been lined up with His?
After doing this study, I noticed Jesus used four different words to explain each facet of our love for Him because they are distinct yet all connected.
At the core is our heart. Proverbs 4:23 says, “From the heart flows the issues of life.”
Transformation and loving God starts with our heart, which affects our soul, which affects our thoughts, which ultimately affects our actions.
As believers, He has given us a new heart to desire the things of God, but sometimes selfish thoughts start to overshadow it.
Ask Him today to push away those selfish thoughts that the enemy is using to try to harden your heart. Ask Him to reveal His desires to you. Let Him weed out any ugly roots of bitterness that have been planted in your heart.
Loving Him with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength is what it means to live by faith.
-Alina