“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) Matthew 22:37-38.

What does it mean to be totally committed to a course? Is it an aspirational value or utopian ideals that can never be achieved? Is it an infeasible concept which is wielded and bandied about by preachers?

It has been empirically proven that the success and longevity of a marriage relationship is largely contingent on the total commitment of the parties involved. A task which hitherto proved impossible is able to see the light of day when there is total commitment. To be highly successful in any field of endeavour, one must be 100% committed to the course. Total commitment is therefore not an abstract concept; it is real and it is critical to success.

Our commitment to the course of Christ as disciples is tripartite. It starts with genuine love for the Lord and the instruments through which we demonstrate that love are the heart, the soul, and the mind.

The heart is the seat of our affections and feelings. We understand these emotions better when we become victims of an unrequited love. We hurt because we have invested our emotions into the relationship. When our object of love responds to our overtures, we are overwhelmed with positive emotions. God demonstrated His love for us first by giving us His only begotten Son to atone for our sins (John 3:16). If we choose not to love Him back, we will rather be hurt and heart-broken because it is only Christ who is big enough to fill the void in our hearts.

The soul is the entity in man that distinguishes him from non-humans. It is the inner life of a human being, the seat of emotions, and the centre of human personality. George MacDonald, a Scottish Minister once quipped:

“Never tell a child you have a soul. Teach him, you are a soul; you have a body …”

The Minister said this in reference to our sense of hopelessness when somebody dies, forgetting that our bodies is just a “temporary clothing of our soul”. To love the Lord with our soul is to avail ourselves for eternity.

“For we know that when this earthly tent we live in is taken down (that is, when we die and leave this earthly body), we will have a house in heaven, an eternal body made for us by God himself and not by human hands” (NLT) 2 Corinthians 5:1

Last but certainly not least concerns loving God with our mind. To love God with our mind is to focus all our intellectual capabilities in knowing God and His will for our lives. It is very tragic that some unfortunate souls after all their studies in their chosen disciplines come to the conclusion that there is no God. It tells you that the problem of atheists and agnostics is not the absence of evidence but it is the suppression of it. Even for the uninitiated in science, the existence of God is self-evident through everything God made. Man therefore has no excuse for not knowing God (Romans 1:19-20).

The heart, the soul, and the mind represent the entirety of our being. God wants our total commitment, not the crumbs of it, and in so doing we fulfill the greatest commandment ever.

A Son’s Commitment – 3 ways to remain committed to the Lord || More