“You Must” A Morning Devotional From the Edges.

From the Edges – A Morning devotion –
“You Must”
Pastor Calvin Cook – August 6, 2024
Scripture focus – Matthew 22:37 Jesus replied – “You must love the Lord your God, with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.” This is the first and greatest commandment. (NLT)

I remember back to my high school Psychology class and the first time I heard about Maslow’s Need Pyramid. At the foundation of the pyramid is Physiological Needs: These are the basic necessities for survival, such as food, water, shelter, sleep, and clothing. Followed by safety needs and third spot belonging to love and belonging needs. The top two spots of the pyramid belong to esteem needs and self – actualization or finding and knowing our purpose.

This morning with all that is going on around us we are at a place where we realize what becomes the most important. If we listen to the words of Jesus when asked what the greatest commandment is – allow these words to echo in your heart today “love the Lord your God, with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind”. I guess I never really paused to think that it this call and direction is first to love God with our whole heart, all of our passion, our desires, our wants, our needs. First and foremost is to get the heart in check and then notice the second being our soul.

I think it is seriously time to ask ourselves what is our heart guiding us to do. Is it to love God first or love whatever suits our human needs or self wants. We plot and plan our life and try to plan other’s lives but the greatest must be to allow the heart to guide us where we need to be, our heart connected to God’s heart. This will truly be what will feed our soul.

Notice in the scripture I shared this morning from the New Living Translation. The words “You Must” precede this call to love God. In no other versions that I looked at do I see the words “You Must”. It would be so easy if Jesus constantly said “You must” do this or that. Well, that does happen in the direction of scripture many times over. We just don’t receive it as a “You Must”. We receive it as suggestions and forget the importance and urgency of the directions of God in our life. This leads us on a course where we head in many different ways and times to other places. We place what Maslow describes as the foundation of our existence and personal needs replacing many times the Love of God and the urgency to love God with our whole self.

Maybe in those moment it is best to be reminded of the commitment we have made in our relationship with Jesus to love God with our whole heart, soul, and mind.