Daily Devotional
Mark 12:30 And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment.
Are you going all-in for God? If not, now is the time. Mark 12:30 articulates what that looks like. It involves loving God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength. When we are all-in, there will be no room for us to give God left overs, we give Him our all.
To be all-in, we must satisfy the 4 requirements mentioned in Mark 12:30 all at the same time. The Bible provides practical ways in which these can be done. The first requirement is to love God with all our heart; that can be demonstrated by adopting Colossians 3:2 which says “set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth”. That simply means make God and the things that pertain to God our one desire. You might ask, what about the other things that I do desire? Our love for other things should flow out of, and not compete with, our love for God. After Paul’s transformation, God was His one desire and so he said in Philippians 3:8, all things I count but loss to know God.
The second requirement is to love God with all your soul; that is making God your only God. Exodus 20:3 says “thou shalt have no other God before me”. Joshua made God his only God and so was able to declare to all Israel in Joshua 24:15 “as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”
The third requirement is to love God with all our mind; that is to possess the mind of Christ (Philippians 2:5). We have the mind of Christ when our thoughts and beliefs are totally aligned to the word of God. David demonstrated how this can be achieved when he said in Psalms 119:11 “thy word have I hid in mine heart, that I might not sin against thee’. By consistently meditating and memorizing scriptures we will ultimately possess the mind of Christ.
The final requirement is to love God with all our strength. Loving God with all our strength is presenting our bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable unto God (Romans 12:1). It is complete surrender to His will. To illustrate this, Paul said “I die daily” in 1 Corinthians 15:31; that meant that every day he subordinated his will to the will of God. God expects the same from us.
Don’t give God a part here and a part there, go all -in and by fulfilling all four requirements.
Life Application: Go all-in for God by making him your one desire and your only God. In addition, possess the mind of Christ and practice total surrender to His will.
Prayer: Lord, I surrender all to you. I commit my heart, mind, soul and body to you. In Jesus name, amen.
Daily Devotional 
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