| Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. |
| —Mark 12:30 |
Looking at the Scripture verse at the beginning of this blog post, I asked myself, “Can I even do that?”
What seems like an impossible task came straight from the Savior’s lips. Because I had heard that verse nearly all my life, it simply floated over my head like so much other Scripture. But, when I read the book, Living Sacrifice: Willing to Be Whittled as An Arrow 1 by Dr. Helen Roseveare, I had to slow down and let each part of that verse speak to my heedless heart.
Serving as a medical doctor and missionary to the African church in Congo for many years, and as a lecturer (or teacher) across the globe in her later years, Dr. Roseveare certainly experienced what giving herself in the manner of this Scripture verse meant. She understood the suffering, the strain, and the privilege of living fully for Christ.
Dr. Roseveare said of this Scripture verse:
To love the Lord my God with all my [heart] will involve a spiritual cost. To love the Lord my God [with all my soul] will involve a volitional and emotional cost. To love the Lord my God with all my mind will involve an intellectual cost. To love the Lord my God with all my strength will involve a physical cost.
In her book, Dr. Roseveare then described how the Lord required of her costly service in each area, including the physical cost of rape at the hands of rebel soldiers during the Congo uprising in 1964. The cost to her mind meant putting away her great medical training for a time, in order to make bricks with the Africans and help build a hospital. Giving her soul meant putting away her former cherished ideas of how she should serve, and instead having to sacrifice the anticipated comforts, like marriage, to serve her Lord.
Sometimes we come to God, intending to serve, and realize that we have experienced deep wounds in one or more of these areas. We need healing before we can give ourselves fully. The Great Physician knows our needs for rest, for comfort, for counsel, for study, for medical treatment, even for a new start. He certainly can provide all we need, in order that He can have a servant strong to serve.
The following words come from the hymn, “Jesus, Lover of My Soul.” 2 Certainly, if we are to love Christ fully, we need to understand His great love for us!
Plenteous grace with thee is found,
grace to cover all my sin;
Let the healing streams abound,
make and keep me pure within.
Thou of life the fountain art,
freely let me take of thee;
Spring thou up within my heart,
rise to all eternity.
| 1 Roseveare, Helen. Living Sacrifice: Willing to Be Whittled as An Arrow. Scotland, UK: Christian Focus Publications Ltd., 1980. Amazon Kindle location 273 of 1644. |
| 2 Wesley, Charles. “Jesus, Lover of My Soul.” Hymn in the public domain, stanza 4. |
