God Doesn't Want to Be On the List

Last Sunday I started a series in Luke 10:25-42, which begins with a hat tip to the Great Commandment. We looked specifically at the command to "love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and strength" from Deuteronomy 6.

A lot of times we talk about our "priorities" as a checklist: I put my relationship with God first, my wife second, my kids third, my job fourth, and so-on. The problem with that is that (a) it's impossible to measure priorities that way and (b) it assumes that you can't love God by loving your wife, your kids, or item #462 on your checklist.

Deuteronomy 6:1-9 is fairly clear: God doesn't want to be on your priority list. He wants the whole thing.

It ought to be as if when people look in our eyes, (Deuteronomy 6:8) they see a person who loves the lord their God with all their heart, soul, and strength that it is as if the message was tied on our foreheads; as if it was written on the door frames of every door we walk through.

Every day, every time, through every door, every part of us ought to be on a mission to love God.

When you look at it that way, the point of Deuteronomy 6 is that there's not much of a difference between secular and sacred; only a difference between loving God and idolatry (Deuteronomy 6:4-5).