Your Love for God: How to Live the First and Great Commandment Today

By Elaine Leonard

Loving God with ALL of your heart, soul, mind, and strength will transform you!

All God wants is all of you! 

As you learn how to love God with your all, you become free.

This practical and inspiring book

• Reveals the first and great commandment as a catalyst to being the real "you.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trilogy Christian Publishing
• Release date: Feb 2, 2021
• ISBN: 9781647737191

Book preview

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Your Love for God

How to live the first and great commandment today

Elaine Leonard

Trilogy Christian Publishers

TUSTIN, CA

Trilogy Christian Publishers

A Wholly Owned Subsidiary of Trinity Broadcasting Network

2442 Michelle Drive

Tustin, CA 92780

Copyright © 2020 by Author

All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise noted, taken from The ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked (KJV) taken from The Holy Bible, King James Version. Cambridge Edition: 1769.

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

For information, address Trilogy Christian Publishing

Rights Department, 2442 Michelle Drive, Tustin, Ca 92780.

Trilogy Christian Publishing/ TBN and colophon are trademarks of Trinity Broadcasting Network.

For information about special discounts for bulk purchases, please contact Trilogy Christian Publishing.

Manufactured in the United States of America

Trilogy Disclaimer: The views and content expressed in this book are those of the author and may not necessarily reflect the views and doctrine of Trilogy Christian Publishing or the Trinity Broadcasting Network.

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

ISBN 978-1-64773-718-4

ISBN 978-1-64773-719-1 (ebook)

Contents

Dedication v

Acknowledgements vi

Introduction vii

Prologue. The Word of God is Alive! ix

Chapter 1. We Love Him Because He First Loved Us 1

Chapter 2. Love God with ALL YOUR HEART 11

Chapter 3. Love God with ALL YOUR SOUL 38

Chapter 4. Love God with ALL YOUR MIND 69

Chapter 5. Love God with ALL YOUR STRENGTH 110

Chapter 6. Love God Completely 143

About the Author 159

Endnotes 160

Dedication

To the memory of my parents, Nunzio Bob and Angelina Perrotti, who introduced me to Father God and my Savior, Jesus Christ, and daily demonstrated what a life devoted to God looked like through prayer, the Word, worship, and service. I look forward to worshiping Him together again one day in glory.

Acknowledgements

First and foremost, I want to thank God for His ever-present love for me. Without Him I would have nothing to give or to write about. He is my everything. Next, I am so thankful for my amazing husband Larry, for his constant support and encouragement. His wisdom and lightheartedness were the perfect combination for me on this journey. I am also grateful to my daughters and their husbands, Leslie and Chris Abshier and Deborah and Johannes Karlsen, and to my son Luke, for their insightful comments. They added much to my understanding in their areas of strength about producing a work like this. I want to say thank you as well to many of my friends and family who partnered with me in prayer, support, and encouragement, from the beginning to the very end. To name a few: Keith and Judy Gilbert, Rita Fiorentino, Bill and Katrina Dougherty and those at Bread of Life Ministries, Dale Sides, Sandy Ramos, Linda Ray, and Donna Diver—thank you. Lastly, I am so grateful to Mark Mingle, Brad Patton, Kerry Benson, and the amazing team at Trilogy Publishing. Your creativity, uplifting words, and patience through this process have been a blessing. I count it a privilege to work with all of you. Thank you.

Introduction

Loving God is a deep issue of the heart for me. I was introduced to Him at a very young age in my home with a big Bible on the coffee table in the living room, a picture of Jesus and a cross on the wall, and lots of prayers. I would cry every year leading up to Easter as I heard about what Jesus went through for us because He loved us. As I grew up in the church I learned and experienced more about my faith, and my love for God grew.

Yes, I loved Him because He first loved me. My heart was full of affection whenever I thought about God and experienced blessings. However, this love was mostly based on an emotional response to what I was learning and receiving.

It was an eye-opening drive in my car that woke me up to the limits I had on my love for Him. Listening to worship music when I drive is a habit that I enjoy. One day, after joining with a song and singing my love to Him, I sensed the Lord asking, What are the great commandments? I quickly and confidently said, Love God, and love your neighbor. To my surprise, He said, Look them up. I pulled over to a safe place and opened up the Bible I had in my car. The index in the back helped me to find Mark chapter 12. I read:

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. And the second, like it, is this: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. There is no other commandment greater than these (Mark 12:30-31 NKJV).

I was convicted that I had minimized both commandments, leaving out vital aspects of these very important words of Christ. Realizing that I didn’t understand all of what was involved in loving God and loving my neighbor, I decided to pursue this further.

This book is the summation of my pursuit into the first of the two commandments. Since loving God has been a lifetime quest for me, this is where my focus began.

I believe that for anyone who is a lover of God, and for anyone seeking to find Him, this pursuit and focus on the how to love Him is an important road to travel sometime in your life. I pray this book will help you along that path.

Love and blessings,

Elaine

prologue

The Word of God is Alive!

(You will definitely want to read this.)

When I took my first Bible research class, it changed the way I interacted with the Bible. The Bible, especially the life of Jesus, was always of interest to me, but I have to admit that I read it like any other book. I read it to get information. It was during this class that I realized that the Bible was actually words from God. The men wrote, but God moved through them what to write by way of the Holy Spirit.

Knowing this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture comes from someone’s own interpretation. For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit (2 Peter 1:20-21 ESV).

I also saw that when God speaks, there is power—power to create, power to change, and power to heal.

And God said, Let there be light, and there was light (Genesis 1:3 ESV).

By the word of the Lord the heavens were made, and all the host of them by the breath of His mouth (Psalm 33:6 NKJV).

We see by reading Genesis chapter 1 that God created the earth and everything in it by His spoken words. Also, when Jesus came to earth, He did the same.

He said to the man who was paralyzed—I say to you, rise, pick up your bed and go home. And immediately he rose up before them and picked up what he had been lying on and went home, glorifying God (Luke 5:24b-25 ESV).

Jesus spoke of a man having great faith because he knew that Jesus only had to speak for his servant to be changed by His words, even though spoken from afar.

But say the word, and let my servant be healed. When Jesus heard these things, he marveled at him, and… said, I tell you, not even in Israel have I found such faith. And when those who had been sent returned to the house, they found the servant well (Luke 7:7b, 9-10 ESV).

God doesn’t change. His words still carry power.

For the word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart (Hebrews 4:12 NKJV).

Jesus used the spoken words of Scripture to fight off Satan when tempted by him. Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. And when He had fasted forty days and forty nights, afterward He was hungry. Now when the tempter came to Him, he said, If You are the Son of God, command that these stones become bread. But He answered and said, It is written, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God’ (Matthew 4:1-4 NKJV).

Jesus knew that we are to live from every word that comes from God. In this temptation, Satan questioned Jesus’ identity by saying, If you are the Son of God. Jesus spoke out a truth of the Bible instead of considering what Satan said. We can do the same—speak truths from the Bible—during this kind of temptation, and many other kinds of attacks.

God tells us that we are in warfare against evil, so we must put on His armor. One of those pieces to use is the sword of the Spirit, which is God’s Word.

Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places. Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand. Stand therefore… And take… the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God (Ephesians 6:11-14a,17b NKJV).

I did not use Scripture this way for years but realized I needed to. I wanted to be like the man that Jesus said had great faith. Believing that God’s words have power and speaking them into circumstances of life became my goal.

One night I was very sick. I was running a fever and had an intense sore throat. It was so bad that I thought I needed to go to the doctor to probably get an antibiotic, but I decided to read my Bible for twenty-four hours first and believe that what I was reading could heal me. I would fall asleep in the middle of reading, but I kept pushing myself to even speak it out whenever I was awake. I asked God to help me believe, and after about ten hours I woke up and was totally healed! The words that I speak to you are spirit, and they are life (John 6:63b NKJV).

Think about it. If it is words—spoken or read—about Jesus that give people the power to get saved and have eternal life, then of course, the Word of God is life-giving and powerful!

Receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls (James 1:21b ESV).

His Word gives us the power to change. I have seen many people’s lives impacted, healed, and changed for