Tag: Bible verses about loving God first and foremost

2 Kings 22:11 (NKJV) 11 Now it happened, when the king heard the words of the Book of the Law, that he tore his clothes.

Our sincerity in our walk with God is more important than we know.

And if we look at it closely, we will understand that it revolves around what is in our heart.

In the verse above, king Josiah had realized that the nation of Judah had neglected God and their relationship with Him.

They had abandoned Him.

It happened by no fault of their own. The generations preceding them had slowly left God behind, trading Him for idols and false gods.

But when Josiah discovered the truth about their situation, he immediately tore his clothing as was the Jewish custom when something terrible had happened.

More importantly, though, he took steps to rectify the situation and get the people of Judah back on track.

So it should be for us.

Our walk with God should be the highest priority in our life. Everything else must come after.

And when we see that we have lapsed somewhere, fixing it must be what we focus on.

As with Josiah, the state of our heart must be one that is soft and pliable; moldable by God.

Life, and the things we encounter, can cause our hearts to become hard and callous. A heart in this condition does not easily respond to God’s promptings or the conviction of the Holy Spirit.

The best remedy for this is for us to recognize our condition and to lay ourselves repentantly at the feet of Jesus, asking Him to teach us His ways.

And He will willingly do that for each of us, no questions asked.

Pastor Curt & Pastor Ellie

Seven Seas Ministries
49 N Lamplighters Walk
Hampstead, NC 28443

401-439-3780

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1 Samuel 16:18 (LSB) 18 Then one of the young men answered and said, “Behold, I have seen a son of Jesse the Bethlehemite who is a skillful musician, a mighty man of valor, a warrior, one who is understanding in speech, and man of fine form; and Yahweh is with him.”

The life of David would be perfect for a case study of someone used by God for his qualities, and despite his faults.

He is an example of someone who loved God, working diligently to do what was right and honorable in His eyes.

The verse above listed David’s attributes; skillful musician, a man of valor, a warrior, sensible, physically attractive.

And finally, it was said that God’s presence was with him.

As I have recently been working my way through 1 Samuel and 2 Samuel again, I have been paying close attention specifically to David and the things he did.

He was truly a man after God’s heart. An honorable man who, despite being a warrior, also displayed God’s mercy and compassion toward Saul, who had tried to kill him numerous times.

On multiple occasions, David had opportunities to easily kill Saul. But he refused to do so, knowing that Saul was anointed by God as Israel’s king.

Seeing this really impacted me and got me thinking. It caused me to examine myself and ask if I would have been able to do the same had I been in David’s shoes at those moments.

And it caused me to ask God to continue to do a work in my heart and life, transforming me more each day as I surrender myself to Him, that I might be as David was; a man after God’s own heart.

May we all have a heart like David’s, wanting to please God and bring glory and honor to His name in all we do, even despite ourselves.

Pastor Curt & Pastor Ellie

Seven Seas Ministries
49 N Lamplighters Walk
Hampstead, NC 28443

401-439-3780

If you know someone who will enjoy this or be encouraged by it, please feel free to share it with them!

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Deuteronomy 6:5 (NKJV) 5 You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength.

This is the greatest commandment of all.

It should get our full attention.

And it should be where we put our greatest efforts.

All else comes after this. For if we get this right, many other things will fall into place in our lives.

With that said, we need to look at some of the ways this is overlooked and improperly prioritized.

Humanity has a sin problem. We wrestle with lust, fornication, drunkenness, pride, thievery, etc.

We fight loneliness, anger, bitterness, and we hold grudges. We struggle with forgiving others.

And then one day someone tells us that God is the solution to these things. And they are correct. He is.

But if we pursue a relationship with God solely to ask Him to fix our problems, we are in it for the wrong reasons. We have a mistaken perspective.

Our pursuit of God should be for who He is, seeking forgiveness and the redemption of our sinful selves, not just for Him to fix our problems.

When we pursue Him with mistaken motives, our relationship with Him is doomed to failure before it even starts.

Why?

Because if we go to Him looking only for solutions to our problems, and those solutions fail to come, or come more slowly than we hoped for, many will walk away claiming that “it didn’t work” for them.

But when we seek Him for who He is, learning to love Him more than life itself, He will help us overcome our sin in ways that defies human understanding and logic.

And our lives will be transformed because He is moving and working in us as we draw near to Him and seek Him with our whole heart.

It all comes down to having the right motives and the proper perspective. And as our love for Him grows, and we learn to fully surrender to Him, He will begin to set us free from the things that had held us captive for so long.

Jeremiah 29:13 (NKJV) 13 And you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart.

Pastor Curt & Pastor Ellie

Seven Seas Ministries
49 N Lamplighters Walk
Hampstead, NC 28443

401-439-3780

If you know someone who will enjoy this or be encouraged by it, please feel free to share it with them!

To have the Bible Verse of The Day delivered to your inbox each day, please Click Here and then enter your email address in the box near the upper left corner of the page. 

Mark 12:30 (NKJV) 30 And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ This is the first commandment.

If we love God with all of our heart we will truly prosper in this life.

Loving God with all our heart will cause us to live righteously. And that, my friend, is what a “Christian Walk” is all about. Our walk with Christ is an example to others.

As I ponder today on the beautiful verse above, I realize that loving the Lord God with all our heart is a place we will grow into if we truly go after Him with every ounce of our being!

In doing so, we must want to invest our life in Him. We must let go of some things that stand tall in our hearts, and He must be the tallest, towering above everything else.

Why does this have to be?

Why can’t we have other things that we love and cherish? We absolutely can have those things that we love and cherish if they remain in their proper place.

If we have things in our life that we put before God, they are the things we must focus on putting in their proper place.

It takes time to realize this, and time for the adjustment, but we must start somewhere.

Now, the result of making these very hard adjustments is that we will begin to see our life change. A little at a time we will begin to make God-led, righteous choices.

Why?

Because we reach a point where what matters to Him means more than what matters to us.

And because we want what He wants, we will ask Him more and more for His answers, and He will show us great and mighty things as we rely on Him! Amen.

Jeremiah 33:3 (NKJV) 3 ‘Call to Me, and I will answer you, and show you great and mighty things, which you do not know.’

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Matthew 22:37 (NKJV) 37 Jesus said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’

As I was pondering on the things of God yesterday evening, this question came to me:

How much do you love God?

It came to me not only as a direct question for me to respond to, but a question that I should also ask others.

The intensity with which we love God will impact every single aspect of our lives.

Furthermore, the depth of our love for God shows our level of understanding when it comes to who He is, what He has done for us, and where He falls in our life’s priorities.

I know that may cause some to flinch, and it may even cause others to feel like that is a little on the legalistic side.

But let’s look a bit closer so we can better understand this.

These words were originally spoken in Deuteronomy 6:5, as God spoke to Israel and laid out His commandments and rules for their lives.

Jesus quoted it when a Sadducee tried to trick Him, asking Him, “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?”.

Jesus called this the “first and great commandment”, giving it the ultimate priority in the life of a believer.

As we begin to understand the importance of this more completely on a personal level, we will begin to see ourselves change.

We will no longer think of ourselves first. Instead, we will put God first, taking Him into consideration in everything that we do; every choice we make, every word that we speak, every action that we take.

Our love for God will overrule our love for other things; our habits, our tendencies, our hobbies, our lusts, our desires, etc.

For some, this change happens slowly over time. For others, it happens very quickly. Either way, it is a transformation that is undeniable.

The speed at which this happens in our lives is, without a doubt, dependent upon the depth of understanding we have when it comes to the seriousness of loving “the Lord Your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind”.

And regardless of the speed, the most important thing is that it does happen.

With all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.

Pastor Curt & Pastor Ellie

Seven Seas Ministries
49 N Lamplighters Walk
Hampstead, NC 28443

401-439-3780

If you know someone who will enjoy this or be encouraged by it, please feel free to share it with them!

To have the Bible Verse of The Day delivered to your inbox each day, please Click Here and then enter your email address in the box near the upper left corner of the page. 

To have the Bible Verse of The Day delivered to your inbox each day, please Click Here and then enter your email address in the box near the upper left corner of the page.