All Your Heart: Introduction

All Your Heart, All Your Soul: The Work of Restoration and Why it Matters

INTRODUCTION

The greatest commandment is to love the Lord with all our hearts, all our souls, all our strength, and all our minds—to love the Lord wholly (Matthew 22:37). The only possible way we can approach this command, this longing from God, is to let him restore us. That begins by admitting the need for restoration–admitting our brokenness–and being willing to undergo the restoration process.

Here’s the good news. We are never asked to do something in the Kingdom of God unless the way has already been paved. Jesus is the way. He is the Good Shepherd leading and restoring us to his kind of love so we can love him the way he asks us to–the way we are created to. We are made in his image, and he loves us with all he’s got. That became evident when Jesus shed his blood on the cross. The cross ransoms us from sin and the devastation that accompany it. But because of the cross, we can know God’s love and become like him in love.

In the restoration process, we learn to love God with all our hearts and to truly love each other. Brokenness affects everyone. We see that from the Garden of Eden all the way to the mirror we look in daily. When we get turned again towards God, we become hope and light for others. To love each other is not only the second-great command, but Jesus says it is the mark of his followers. This is how they will know you are my disciples, that you loved one another (John 13:34-35). That is us.

Restoration is a big, biblical, glorious deal. It begins with the cross of Jesus, and it is the kindest, holiest, most complete work we can ever know.

Why would we ever say no? Why would we ever resist?

It enables us to love God with all our hearts, and it empowers us to love others.

Up Next in the All Your Heart Series, “To Turn”

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