Living in the In-Between - Devotion 3
Love God - Soul
“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment.” Matthew 22:37-38
Soul food; it just sounds good, right? (I suppose it does right now because it is lunchtime as I write this.) What makes soul food, soul food? Not all Southern food is soul food, but all soul food is Southern food. Millie Peartree wrote, “Soul food is an ethnic cuisine traditionally prepared and eaten by African-Americans in the Southern United States. In the late 19th century, the Black Church became a gathering place for the Black community and impacted the development of what’s now considered soul food. Particularly in rural areas, foods like fried chicken, fried fish, sweet potato pie, red drinks, black-eyed peas and others were served during Emancipation celebrations and church gatherings.” Soul food today, in many ways, is food that comes from the heart. It is food that brings people together and yes, gets into your very soul. Now I am really hungry!
Your soul is the spiritual part of who you are. Every human being is made of both material and immaterial parts, and your soul is the immaterial part of who you are. This is your consciousness, your desires, and your will. Your mind is different, and we will talk about that tomorrow, but your soul is you. That said, we are all called to love God with all of our souls.
This is the part of you that longs for God. If you have been around church at all over the years, you have probably heard about the “God-shaped hole” that each person has. It is the place in our lives that only God can really fulfill. We all try to fill that spot with all kinds of things: hobbies, relationships, drugs, sex, alcohol, career, or money. Nothing fills that hole other than a relationship with God. Here is the thing: it is real.
“He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man’s heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.” Ecclesiastes 3:11
God placed “eternity into man’s heart.” Every person on the earth knows that there is something beyond us. This is why there are so many causes around us. Everyone wants to leave something that will make the world better. There is more than just us. What we long for is transcendence. Transcendence is defined as something above and independent of the universe. Wayne Grudem describes it well: “The term often used to say that God is much greater than creation is the word transcendent. Very simply, this means that God is far ‘above’ the creation in the sense that he is greater than creation and is independent of it.”
God has placed a longing for the transcendent in us, a longing for Him. This is the longing of the soul.
Loving God with all of your soul, then, is to place all of your dreams, plans, desires, will, and future at the feet of Jesus. It is to trust Him with the very soul of all you are and all you do. It is to thirst for Him at all times.
It can be a scary thing to give up your dreams, to submit your will to God. This comes down to whether or not you trust God’s heart for you. Does God actually love you? Does He actually have good plans for you? Is God trustworthy? I never dreamed I would be living in Michigan for the past 21 years, but I have. God’s plans for me have not always been easy and I have even fought them at times, but they have always been good.
Love God with all of your soul. Place it all at His feet and trust Him today. Should you not be completely sure about how to do that, I am confident that if you contacted your Pastor or Growth Community (small group) leader, they would love to speak with you and pray with you.
He is worthy. He loves you, has great plans for you, and will complete the work He began in you.