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Love God with All Your Mind (The Mind Series, Part 12)

And he answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.”
Luke 10:27

Sin has terribly corrupted our minds. The apostle Paul graphically describes the condition of the unregenerate mind.

So this I say, and affirm together with the Lord, that you walk no longer just as the Gentiles also walk, in the futility of their mind, being darkened in their understanding, excluded from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardness of their heart; …
Ephesians 4:17–18

It is unlikely that we will fully comprehend the impact of sin on our minds this side of glorification. Take a few minutes and consider how quickly our minds can lead us into sin. Someone makes an unkind remark; a person drives too slowly in front us; we get difficult financial or medical news. Our minds can get us into trouble in a heartbeat.

So when we are instructed to love God with all our mind, we understand that a massive transformation must take place for that to even be considered. And we realize that we must always pursue loving God with all our minds, knowing that it will be a life-long challenge.

“The Puritans understood that failure was guaranteed if a believer did not have a plan for what to do with his thoughts throughout the day.”1

We can learn to love God with our minds when our minds are absorbed with the truth of God’s word. This is the transformation that takes place when we are redeemed (Romans 12:2; Ephesians 4:23). As our minds are being transformed so that we can learn to think as our Lord thinks (1 Corinthians 2:16), we can respond to the word in obedience. Loving God with all our minds means that we speak truth to ourselves and determine to live in light of that truth.

We are really the greatest obstacle to living in obedience to the truth that we know. We are inclined to selfish living. We love ourselves far more than we would ever want to admit. That is why we are constantly tempted to have sinful attitudes and to respond with sinful actions. To love God with all our minds is to determine to meditate on the truth of God’s word and faithfully obey it.

For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments; and His commandments are not burdensome.
1 John 5:3

1Saxton, David W, God’s Battle Plan for the Mind: The Puritan Practice of Biblical Meditation, 826, Kindle.

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Rocky Wyatt

Rocky Wyatt came to know the Lord as a young teenager and began working in youth ministry when in college. After serving in churches in Utah, California and Colorado, Rocky moved to Texas to serve as Youth Pastor at Countryside Bible Church. He served there for 26 years where he eventually moved from youth ministry to serve as an Associate Pastor.

Over the course of his ministry, Rocky has always had a desire to train men for pastoral ministry in the context of the local church. In 1992 he started XL Ministries, an organization that is committed to helping churches establish intensive internships for pastoral training. In 2020 he left his position at Countryside Bible Church to become the Executive Director of XL Ministries and now works full time assisting churches in training men for ministry.

He is co-author of The Youth Ministry Training Manual, a textbook for training youth pastors, and has also written multiple other resources for use in various local church ministries. He is currently working on a book to encourage churches to take the primary responsibility to train pastors.

Rocky is married to Pamela, has two sons and daughters-in-law, and ten grandchildren. 

Therefore, my beloved brethren, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that your toil is not in vain in the Lord.1 Corinthians 15:58