The 4th Degree

In Mark 12:30, Jesus tells a crowd that the most important command is to love God with all of our heart, soul, mind and strength. On the surface this obviously seems like a good idea-you should love God before anything else in your life. Upon further inspection however, you realize the difficulty of the commitment level that He is asking for. It's not just that we are supposed to put God at the top of our priority list, but that we love Him with every facet of who we are. This is where we struggle and honestly wonder how God can demand such a high level of devotion from us.

God commands all of that from us because He understands things that we don't. If we only commit our heart and strength, but keep our soul and mind for ourselves, we will eventually drift to submitting none of ourselves to Him. He realizes the weakness of our nature and that the only safe place for us to be is fully committed to His cause and Kingdom. It's not a petty or envious request, but one that provides protection and has the capacity to change each part of us. If we believe that God only wants the best for His children then it should spur us to want to give Him the best of who we are as well.