“Loving God With All Your Soul” Matthew 22:34-40 Preached at Salem on Feb 15, 2009

"Loving God With All Your Soul" Matthew 22:34-40 Preached at Salem on Feb 15, 2009

 

    When I say "soul" what is the first thing you think of? Aretha Franklin? What do you picture? Soul train? Soul food? What comes to your mind? It's different with your soul. Where is your soul? If I say where is your heart? That's easy. If I say where is your mind? That's easy. But where is your soul? Do you point to your foot? We don't even know where to point. The greatest question to begin this is What is my soul? Heart and mind are obvious but soul is not quite so obvious. It's a little more abstract than what we looked at last week.

    If you do a study of the Old Testament word for "soul" and the New Testament word for "soul" you get a pretty quick idea of what God is talking about. What's God talking about when He says, "Love Me with all your soul?" The Old Testament word for soul is the word nephehs and it means literally "to breath" and it's the idea that God breaths life into us. That's why we have a soul. We're a living soul. We have an awareness that nothing else in creation has because God Himself breathes life into us. The New Testament word for soul is the word we get psychology and all those words from – psuche. It has to do with your will, your drive, the passion of your life, the power with which you live. Put those two ideas together – Old and New Testament and you get a pretty good idea of what the soul is. Based on a good long look at those words and how they were used in the Bible four things that are a part of who you are when it comes to your soul. Soul is my desires and passions. Soul is my God given personality. Every one of us is unique. God h as made us that way. At the essence of it your soul is your life. I put that in capital letters because we're talking about the kind of life that only God can give, the creator, the life that is given to us by God. Your soul is the passion with which I've living, the personality that I've been given, it's the path my life is taking. It's the power in my being.

It's you. That's what your soul is all about. Tonight we're going to take a look at, based on this definition, how do you and I love the Lord with all of our soul.

Do you want to love the Lord with all your soul? Do you want to take the personality that you've been given an use it to love the Lord. Loving God with all your heart- I covered passion pretty well with that last time

1. Your Soul love Him with Praise

    Have you ever stopped to think about how numb we are- we have so much thrown at our souls these days that some kind of mechanism has kicked in to shut ourselves down emotionally to the point that we can't feel anything anymore. We're bombarded by so much stimuli that we can't take it anymore, so we can't seem to feel what we once could feel. For example, I remember as a kid the distinct soothing feeling that listening to the rain would have on me, or someone running a bathtub full of water. It would soothe me right off to sleep. I don't have that feeling anymore. Some people have told me they once had that feeling of excitement and love for their spouse they don't have any more. The human emotions are like that- they can get where they just kind of shut down. Some people have even said that about loving God- and feel like God doesn't love them anymore- or they don't have the same feeling they once had. Aside from the fact that God's love for us is not based on feeling, but on fact, the fact is the reason we feel like this from time to time is because we have allowed ourselves to become empty. Not long after we were first married Robin and I went for a drive somewhere. We were driving out on a west Texas highway, must have been 100 degrees when all of a sudden, the car began to shimmy and shake, and then the engine cut off and we rolled to a stop. I looked at the fuel gauge- slam empty! Robin doesn't say a whole lot- she didn't need to. Ever get that look from your wife? One look was all it took to communicate the message- "what kind of idiot would make take a trip like this and not fill up first?" Believe you me after 25 or more years of marriage I have never failed to do that since.

    We may never forget to fill up our gas tank before we take a long trip somewhere, and we may never forget to fill our fuel tank before winter sets it, but why is it we have a more difficult time filling our soul tank. As in every relationship, we get out of it what we put into it.

    When we spend time with God, loving Him, its amazing how quick that tank gets full.

Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless his holy name! Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits, who forgives all your iniquity, who heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the pit, who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy, who satisfies you with good so that your youth is renewed like the eagle's. (Psalm 103:1-5) Notice how the Psalmist says your youth is renewed- the passion you had for God is restored, so that you are no longer empty but full. This comes about by praising God. I mentioned God filling up your soul- did you know that the Hebrew idea of the soul nephish is also part of the word they use for well.

Psalm 9:1-2 says I will praise You, O LORD, with my whole heart; I will tell of all Your marvelous works. 2 I will be glad and rejoice in You;  I will sing praise to Your name, O Most High.Ps 150:6 Let every thing that hath breath praise the LORD. Praise ye the LORD.Psalm 25 To you, O Lord, I lift up my soul. O my God, I trust in You…Remember O Lord,Your tender mercies and Your lovingkindnesses, for they are from old.

    Many people don't understand the value of praising the Lord. But they are one of the ways that we fill up our souls. If they spend anytime with God at all, its usually just enough to dump on God about what they want from Him. O God- gimme that new truck I've been wanting. O Lord fishing season's coming up. Everybody's got a new boat but me! Then they come to church plop down on a pew and park themselves and think "now if I can just get through this thing we can all get out of here. I'm tired of having the Methodists beat me to the Golden Corral. They wonder why their relationship with God is so empty- its because they are not praising Him.

II. . You Soul loves God with all Your Worship    Let's take it to another level-not just praise, but worship. Praise comes from our mouths, but worship comes from our soul- we were built to worship God. Worship is the expression of our soul, who we are as the people of God. If you want to learn how to express yourself, then worshipping is the way to do it. One of the reasons why some folks are just so dead and empty inside is because they have never been taught to worship.

I want to shift gears here and take you to another level. Romans 12:1- which is your spiritual worship. Sometimes when we come to church we think that as long as we sing a couple of hymns, take up an offering, and then listen to a sermon, then we have worshipped. No we haven't. If our soul is just as dry when we left as when we came in- then we haven't worshipped. We don't worship until our souls receive something from Him and when we have something to offer to Him. God wants so much to fill us with His presence, but we have to have a heart that He can fill. I mentioned our tanks being full- but sometimes its not full of the right stuff. Sometimes the well of our souls is contaminated- polluted- by sin. Sometimes its full of full of the stuff of the world, or ourselves, or whatever that God wants to fill us with His presence but can't because of all the stuff that is in the way. Its got to be cleaned out first, purified.

    Jason was telling us last week that part of the process of Katie's healing was that the doctors are confident Katie will get better, but the process also involves some things that are getting in the way of it, impeding it- and when they get rid of those things, then Katie's healing goes better and faster. Our souls work the same way. IF we want to experience the fullness of God's presence and to fill up our souls in worship, we've got to get rid of some things. We can't give God a soul full of sin? We can't give Him a soul full of porno or deceit, or lustful thoughts. We can't give him a barrel full of selfishness or hatefulness or bitterness. You would be surprised how little bitterness it takes to fill up the well of our souls.

 

III. Loving God with All Your Soul Means Being Filled By His Spirit Another way we love God with all our soul is coming into contact with His power- we call that the Holy Spirit. Now I must warn you- this might make you feel the way I did at the dentist a few weeks ago. Dr. Griffin, my dentist, is up in his 80s now. When he tells you this is going to make you feel a little uncomfortable, you better ask him for some novacane and then grab on to the arms of that dentist chair as hard as you    Ephesians 5:18 tells us Do Not be Drunk with wine, wherein is excess, but be filled with the Holy Spirit. Here is the uncomfortable part. People's souls don't get full of God because they don't feel comfortable with the power of the Holy Spirit. Why? Because we are afraid of Him. We're afraid the Spirit is going to cause us to get out of control. That's funny because many who imbibe in alcohol don't worry for one minute they're going to get too drunk to drive home. They don't have any worries about getting so inebriated they can't stand up right or that they'll do something foolish like put their head through the juke box or really embarrass themselves. The Holy Spirit will never cause us to do anything like that, yet why are we so uncomfortable and self conscious.

    God's the one who is present in our lives. And when I open up my life to Him, He starts to fill your life with God-things. It's inevitable. So the question we have is how do I do that? How do I open up my life to Him? How am I filled with God's Spirit? How is the truth of Ephesians 5:18 fulfilled in my life "Be filled with God's Spirit."

1. I desire to be filled. It starts with a thirst. Psalm 42:1 We're talking about "Is He controlling my thoughts and actions?" Is He the one who's in charge?

    The first step to letting Him be in charge is saying, "I desire to be filled." Let me work up a thirst for you. Just dream of what it would be like if Jesus Christ were at the center of every decision in your life? What pain might it have saved? Even more, what opportunities might you have seen that you hadn't seen? What would it be like if He were at the center of every decision? What would my life be like if Jesus Christ, if His control, God's Spirit, were at the center of every relationship? How would they change? Maybe not immediately but slowly, surely, securely how would they change? What would it be like if He were at the center of my career? The center of my friendships? The center of my thought life? The center of my love life? The center of my worries and stresses? How would they change? Just dream about that for a minute. That's what we're talking about when we say thirst for this.

The world has yet to see

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness for they will be filled. That's a promise. That is something we should be thirsty for.

2. You repent of your sins and receive God's cleansing. Recognize I've turned my back on my relationship with God. He hasn't turned His back on me as a believer but I've turned my back on Him and I'm walking a different direction. The word "repent" simply means to turn around and walk in a different direction. Do a 180. When I repent it means I agree with God about the fact I'm headed in the wrong direction. I turn around and start heading in the right direction. It's not so much a matter of though as a matter of action. Turning around and moving in a different direction of life. You repent of your sins and then you recognize God has forgiven you because of His grace. I don't deserve it but He has forgiven me.

3. Yield to the Holy Spirit's control. When you see a yield sign what does it mean to you? It means you give the other person the right of way. It doesn't mean "stop". You yield. Some people think it means stop. If I'm yielded to God, I stop, I do nothing and I'm yielded totally to God. It doesn't mean stop. It means you give the other person the right of way. Yield to God's control. You keep moving but it means you give Him the constant right to have His way in your life. That's yielding to the Holy Spirit's control. You don't stop. You don't sit down. You say, "God what do You want me to do today?" and if any of you are doing this perfectly you should be up here teaching this and not me. We all struggle with this. .

    In my life right now, I don't even know all the areas I need to yield to. If He showed me everything I need to yield to Him, I'd die right on the spot thinking I could never do that. All of us would. But He just graciously shows us one little bit at a time. That's why you never run out, by the way. The day you think, "I've got it! I've figured out the Christian life!" He puts something else in your mind. There's always new areas of growth. You yield to the Holy Spirit's control.

4. Trust God to fill you as He said He would. Trust that God will keep His promise and fill you. I've confessed all the sin I know about in my life. I've yielded my life to His control as best as I know how. Now I trust Him to fulfill my life.

Can you be filled with God's Spirit without feeling filled with His spirit? Of course you can. What does a Spirit filled person feel like? What does a Spirit filled person look like? Do they like glow in the dark somehow? Do you grow more hair? I wish, but you don't do that. Do you smell different?

It's trust, not feelings. Whether it sends a chill up my spine or not I know that it's true because He promised it. It doesn't change how you look but it does change how you act. Romans 5:5 "God has given us the Holy Spirit to fill our hearts with His love." What if your life were filled with the love of God in such an incredible way that it overflowed to the people that were around you. What if?