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Jesus replied: ‘You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment.’
Matthew 22:37-38 NLT

If our first and greatest commandment is to love the Lord with ALL our heart, soul, and mind, we must reflect on what that truly means and how we actually accomplish it.

Loving someone unconditionally is rarely easy. If God calls us to love Him with all our heart, we must be willing to give Him even the dark and shattered pieces, trusting Him to mend and heal them.

When He asks us to love Him with all our soul, we must move past how we feel to what is actually truth.

He also asks us to love Him with all our minds, we must discern what we are thinking. Where do we spend our mental energy? Where is our focus?

I know the storms of life will come, and the winds of change will blow. So, how do I grow “God roots”? Roots wrapped around Him so tightly, spread so wide and dug so deeply, that even when the high winds and storms come, all I do is bend and sway with my Savior. As I have pondered this, I’ve landed on four keys to growing “God roots”.

The first is communication:

Prayer grows “God roots”. In Matthew 6, Christ gave us the model for prayer. We are taught to address God and praise Him for who He is, pray for His plan in our lives, ask for what we need physically and spiritually, confess our sins, and request eternal victory through Him.

Communication is more than talking or praying, though. It is about truly listening and discerning God’s will and His plans for us. We must trust Him enough to believe His ways are better than ours.

The second is time:

Time Alone With God or TWAG as my pastor likes to call it, is imperative. We cannot grow our relationship with God if we are not willing to spend time with Him. In this crazy Hollywood lovestruck world, we spend hour upon hour developing new love relationships. How often do we pursue God with that kind of passion and time? How often are we simply still in His arms? “Be still and know that I am God.“ Psalm 46:10 how long has it been since you’ve laid your head on His shoulder, just soaking Him in?

The third is study:

Study does not have to be mind-bending or perplexing. It can be as simple as picking a theme you want to work on in your life, such as forgiveness, joy, peace and reading all of the scriptures regarding it.

God’s Word will speak.

Perhaps it’s as simple as the practical study on Psalms or Proverbs you need, or the eyewitness journeys of The Gospels. Maybe you simply want to meditate on a verse or two, discovering their truth deeply, by looking at nouns and verbs, or the context and audience. Verbs require action and will make us grow.

The weight of God’s Word on us should demand change within us. It should call us to grow as it presses in to make us more like Him.

Lastly, worship:

Worship is not just music. It is much more than songs. Worship is about obedience, allowing God to be the boss, the Lord of our lives. It is about giving and repentance. It is recognizing the divinity of God and longing to serve Him. It is about being part of a working, functioning body of Christ:

“Think of ways to encourage one another to outbursts of love and good deeds. And let us not neglect our meeting together, as some people do, but encourage and warn each other, especially now that the day of his coming back again is drawing near.”
Hebrews 10:24-25 NLT

Dig deep and plant your life in His soil.

You are guaranteed to reap more than you sow.

Father, help us to communicate with You, spend time with You, study and worship You, so that our roots will intertwine with You so completely that as we grow our beauty surprise us. God, show off who You are in us. May we bloom as You desire and may our lives glorify You. Amen.