Devotional Deuteronomy 6:5

Good Morning Yamon Ki Yesepar and Nevim Arith Hayomim:

Deuteronomy 6:5: “And thou shalt love the Lord thy God…”

So you read this and you have no problem with it.  Sure we are to love the Lord God.  I mean any self-respecting Christian will not deny he loves God.

I remember when I was an assistant pastor in an American Baptist Church.  One fourth of the church were rank liberal.  They did not necessarily believe the Bible was truly inspired and that Jesus was born of a virgin.  But I remember sitting down with about six of these liberals and they insisted that they loved God.  Why else did they insist on helping the poor, and the starving people and serving mankind seeking to make a better world?  Then there were another quarter of the church who were fundamentalist and they felt they had the corner on loving God because they were out getting people saved and that was their proof.   Another quarter were part of a new movement at that time called “charismatic’s” and they felt they really cornered the market on God’s love because they felt His love and were moved to tears when they sang worship songs.   I belonged to that last quarter of the church who could not say one way or the other if they loved God.

I have walked this earth for three score years and I still cry out to God to teach me how to love Him.  I want to love Him more than life itself, I long to love Him, I long to have him control every area of my life.  Yet, somehow I feel I fall short of this. Perhaps that longing and desire is loving God?

Love is one of the most difficult words to define.  It is one of the most intense emotions.  Without love, poets would go out of business. If some poet happened to hit on the definitive definition of love, he would put all the other poets out of business, he would single handedly put an end to all the love songs and ballads ever written.

For me personally to understand what it is to “love” God, I must go to the original Hebrew word that is used here. It is the word “ahav.”  Don’t waste your time looking it up in your Strong’s or your Lexicon, it will only tell you that it means “love.”   With that English word we go right back to the poets for a definition.  Instead I am going to look at this word grammatically and esoterically and see if there is any insight.

First I need to look at it grammatically.  In Deuteronomy 6:5 the word “ahav” is not in an imperative (command) form as I thought.  Jesus quoted it as an imperative or a command, but in Deuteronomy 6:5 it is in a simple qal perfect form.  Actually, it could also be a participle.  What this is suggesting is that  God is merely making a statement of fact.  We do love God.  The command is that we acknowledge our love for him.

I have often wondered how one can be commanded to “love.”  But it would make sense to be commanded to respond to that love that is inherent in all of us.  If we do not acknowledge it, then the love will fade and become almost or totally non-existent.

So what am I acknowledging?   The word “love” is spelled “Aleph, Hei, Beth.”   There are many different meanings behind these three letters.  For me the combination I chose or feel led by the Spirit of God to choose, is that the Aleph represents “nothingness” and also a unity or oneness with God.  In other words, to love God means to have, want or desire nothing but what He wants.  When my wants and desires match his wants and desires, I have achieved the “Aleph.”   This is why I have been searching for the heart of God so I will know His heart and make my heart’s desires the same as His heart’s desires. If a love for God is naturally in me, then the more I seek God’s heart desire, the more His heart’s desires will become mine.

The second letter is the “Hei.”  The “Hei’ is the mildest sounding letter in the Hebrew Alphabet.  As a suffix it denotes the feminine form of a noun.  Thus it carries the  idea of the sacrifice of a mother for a child as well as the nurturing and caring of a mother.  When Hei whispers it’s way into our awareness, we can be sure we are in a holy state, close to the Holy name as the Hei is found twice in the name of God.  The Hei brings us near to the mothering aspect of God.  A baby does not have to be told to love it’s mother or commanded, it just loves and expresses that love in it’s total trust and dependency upon it’s mothers.  So too the Hei tells me that when I put my total trust and dependency upon God like a baby does with it’s mother, I am expressing my love to Him.

The final letter is the “Beth.”   Beth is the Hebrew word for “home.”  Everyone yearns for a home.  The Jews wandered for forty years in the wilderness searching for a home.  The Beth calls us to sanctify and make holy the place where we are, even as we find ourselves wandering and searching for a true home. I personally feel like I am in a wilderness searching for a home with God.  Yet the Beth is telling to sanctify the place I am in at this moment and make that my home with God.

So what does it mean to “love God?”  For me as I look at that word: “love” esoterically, I find it is telling me that I seeking nothing for myself, only that which brings pleasure to God.  My delight is to engage in any earthly activity where I will feel His pleasure.  It could be helping make this world a better place as my liberal friends believed.  It could be presenting the claims of Jesus Christ to a lost world as my fundamentalist friends would do.  It could also be to engage in worship as my charismatic friends do.  So long as it brings God pleasure that is my desire. To love God means that I am totally dependant upon Him for everything like a baby is trusting and depending upon it’s mother.  Finally, to love God means that no matter what my situation is, I will declare it a “home” as God is right there with me.