We read in Mark 12 to love the Lord with all of our heart, soul, mind and strength. I think for the most part of the first three, we’re intentional about it, but there’s usually a tendency to overlook or undermine what it means to love God with all of your strength.

Strength is a noun for the word Strong. To be strong is to have a certain level of power, whether physically, mentally, emotionally, psychologically or even financially. If something is referenced as strong, it means that it possesses a level of power that exceeds the average level in that situation or environment.

Now, if the bible says that we are to love the lord with all of our strength, what does that mean? It means loving God with every iota of power that we possess in any area of our life. What this means is that everywhere we exert our strength, we must be able to confirm that that application of our strength is an avenue for loving God.

A display of physical strength is mostly visible, how can we love God with our physical strength? Helping someone move houses, helping someone clean their house when they’re unable to and just making our own physical strength available when theirs seem to be limited.

A couple of months ago, I was on my way to work and I was quite late so I was walking quite briskly. As I was approaching the train station, I saw a woman with 2 boxes and 1 bag. The bag was slung against her shoulder and her two hands were dragging each box behind her. She looked like she was really struggling.

Asides the fact that I was late, I was a little under the weather that day, but not to the point where I couldn’t go to work so you could say I had a little strength in me.

As I approached her, I slowed down and asked where she was headed and she said she was also going to the train station, so I asked if I could help with a box so she didn’t have to carry them all alone. She was so relieved and started thanking me already.

My little strength fell under the category of “loving the lord with ALL my strength”.

When you think of emotional, mental and psychological strength, it might also seem a bit vague but actually, everyday, we’re presented with avenues to love the lord with these levels of strength. Particularly on social media, do you realise that social media is a great place to decipher someone’s level of emotional, mental and psychological strength?

You find that a lot of people respond to things on social media very emotionally and it shows, by the exchange of words, cyber bullying and sometimes even outright threats.  We have an opportunity to love God in all of these ramifications by choosing to do what Jesus will do when we’re faced in situations that require the application of our strength.

I pray we’re more intentional and aware of loving God with the strength that He gives us. I pray we seek opportunities to not only love God with our hearts and minds and souls but also with our power.

God honours and blesses everything we give Him. It’s part of the principle of giving, that when you give, it comes back to you someway. When we love with our strength, we’re opening ourselves up even more to be blessed with fresh, new strength.

So let’s be expectant of loving God this way too.