I was asked recently; “If I love my spouse 100% how can I also love God with all my heart, soul and strength?” This question comes up often, so I offer a brief study to help explain what I see in God’s Word on the matter. Take a moment to read these scriptures and pray about them. Let the Holy Spirit guide your thoughts and pray about how you will make them part of who you are in your marriage.
I can witness to you that as I began to understand the truth and make it my practice to love my God 100% AND my wife 100%, I learned what happily ever after feels like. So, without further ado:
“So sink or swim, I’m divin’ in.”
– Stephen Curtis Chapman
Love God 100%
Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.
Deuteronomy 6:4-5
Many recognize this as a call from God to His people as they are heading for the promised land. God was telling the Israelites to love God and his commandments before anything else him. God knew there would be all sorts of distractions in the land. He knew there would be people tempting them to try other gods and other customs and other forms of worship. He knew they would be prosperous and their newfound wealth would compete for their attention. So he gave them a simple instruction, Love God. If they would do that, then the new land, relationships and wealth they experienced would be a blessing to them.
A couple of thousand years later, in the gospel according to Mark, Jesus was being tested by a Rabi from the local church. The Rabi asked Jesus “What is the most important commandment.” And Jesus replied:
“The most important one,” answered Jesus, “is this: ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.”
-Mark12:29-31
The Rabi agrees with Jesus and adds that following these two is more important than all burnt offerings and sacrifices. Jesus ends the conversation with:
When Jesus saw that he had answered wisely, he said to him, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.” And from then on no one dared ask him any more questions.
-Mark 12:34
In every case notice that God is calling us to love him with all that we are. So how do you carry out the love for God? Is it reading your Bible? Is it serving in the soup kitchen? Maybe your service to God is going to church. All of these are good things to do but are they what God calls us to do to love Him?
How do we love God?
We have established that God is serious about our need to love him with all that we are. But we may still be asking, “What does it mean to love God?” “How do we walk that out?” “Is there a way to know that we are loving God?” Well, the short answer is “yes” we can know. God was kind enough to give us his printed word called the Bible. He gave this to help us know.
In the old testament, God’s law continually tells us that to love God is to obey his commands. Think of it as letting your actions show your love for God more than your words. Abraham understood this and without questioning God he took his only son, Isaac, up the mountain to sacrifice him (Genesis 22). That’s love beyond my best understanding. I think few who fully understand what was going on in that story. But I do know that Abraham loved God enough to obey what he was being told to do. He was saying “not my will, but your will be done.” The apostle John reminds us that we can love God through our obedience.
We know that we have come to know him if we keep his commands. Whoever says, “I know him,” but does not do what he commands is a liar, and the truth is not in that person. But if anyone obeys his word, love for God is truly made complete in them.
-1John 2:3-5
We know that we love God when we can follow his will even when we do not understand it or we have other ideas.
Love your spouse 100%
We are called to love our spouse 100%. This sounds like the same call as loving God100%. We are called to love our spouse with all that we have and all that we are. This might be where we get confused if we do not understand the marriage relationship.
Consider the Apostle Paul’s instructions on marriage in Ephesians 5:22-31. Wives are to submit to their husbands in the same way the church submits to Christ. And husbands are to love their wives in the same way Christ loves the church. This seems pretty clear. The church is to follow Christ unconditionally and Christ gave all of himself for the church. Easy to understand but perhaps not so easy to put into practice.
Paul ends this teaching by restating God’s plan for marriage from Genesis 2:24.
“For this reason, a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.”
-Ephesians 5:31
Paul is telling us how we can indeed love and respect like the relationship between Christ and his church if we will act as one flesh. A detailed study of one flesh needs more space than this post and is discussed in my book titled “The Book of Agreement and Remembrance”. For our purpose here let me give you two ideas:
- The one flesh couple is in a covenant relationship. Covenant means there is no reason that you would break up. You are in it for life.
- When you are one flesh, you understand that there is no action you can take (or not take) that does not affect the other.
The actions of a couple in a covenant relationship acting as one flesh are the actions of one.
Call to action:
Loving your spouse with all that you have, all that you are and all that you will ever have IS loving God in the same way.
Marriage is called to be a covenant relationship that is until death. This is God’s plan. God created Adam to cultivate and care for His creation. He saw that it was not good for man to be alone, so He created the woman. He wanted to fellowship with them as one flesh, so He presided over the first-ever wedding. He pronounced that they were no longer two but one.
Stop asking how can I do both? If the Bible is true and you are indeed following God’s commands and principles, you are loving God when you love your spouse with all that you have.
Start asking, “How can we love God with all that I have?” You will experience the joy of being in God’s plan. I know this joy, I have experienced it, and I believe this is what God intended for all married couples. Please, apply the scripture to your marriage. Here is one example of how Gay and I read the text used for this study:
Hear, Chris and Gay: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.
I pray that this blesses you in your walk with one another and your service to our Lord and God.
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Genesis 2:24 Ministries
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