With all my heart, soul, mind and strength

Compassion and judgement keep coming up in so many conversations. At school, at church in my own focused time with the Lord.

I now believe, that in my life compassion takes more energy and surrender, to the Lordship of Christ, than judgement. I'm not saying this is the case for everyone. But for me it is easier to have judgement without love than to have compassion without love.

God through Jesus Christ has called us to love Him with our whole being. Our minds, our emotions, our wills and our physical strength. Maybe we should be careful about teaching anything that places more emphasis on one part of our lives over another.

Haven't we made the mistake throughout church history of swinging to an emphasis that focuses on one or two over the others. Some churches focus on the engagement of the mind. Some churches focus on the engagement of the emotion. Some churches focus on the engagement of the bodies in service to others. I believe when we get overly focused we ignore the others and even worse we often become very critical of those who place their focus in a different place while being totally blind or feeling totally justified in our own particular emphasis.

If we had a relationship with the Lord that demonstrated that God wants us to love him with our minds, our emotions, our wills and our actions wouldn't we be living in a process of sanctification or transformation? How could we stop God from changing us? God doesn't want parts of us. He wants our whole being.

Wouldn't we have a life that we could share with our neighbors? Wouldn't we have a testimony at church for our fellow believers? Wouldn't we be light in a dark world?

For instance, many of us know quite a bit about the gospel. But over and over again the testimony we hear at church is that we lost an opportunity in our everyday world to share because of fear. I would argue that many believers have not been trained that there emotions need to be submitted to the Lord. They don't know what to do with their emotional life. So when it overcomes their faith they feel hopeless and even ashamed. It doesn't even occur to them that they could become equipped to know what to do with that emotion.

Has the language of reason obliterated our ablility to speak about emotion?

It makes sense to me that communities of believers who have been focused on knowing also tend to be weak on compassion.

I see real hope and real possibilities for a rich life in learning to love the Lord my God with all my heart, with all my mind, with all my strength. I am hopeful that the first leads to the second having compassion in words, in my heart and in my deeds for my neighbors.

I know this post barely holds together. It covers a lot of territory. But that makes it an honest reflection of my walk with the Lord right now. So much of my time has been spent in details. Somehow I think so much of the big picture became lost. I want to be able to interact with the big picture. When I am examining or climbing in a tree I want to be able to hold onto the reality of the forest.