And the Lord your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your descendants, to love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, that you may live. (Deuteronomy 30:6)
Everyone who professes faith in the One, True God and His Son, strives to love Him with all their heart — that is the intent and goal anyway. The reality, however, is that we often find we still love ourselves way too much, meaning that we really don’t love Him with ALL our heart. Peter vowed to die for Messiah, yet when he thought his life was in jeopardy, he denied even knowing Him. The point is that God has a way of orchestrating events whereby the true intent of our heart is made known.
That being said, in this verse an amazing promise is made — there will come a day when God will touch our hearts in such a way that we will attain this lofty goal and truly love Him with all of our heart that we may truly live. No doubt, He does this in response to those who have turned their hearts back to Him in repentance, but don’t miss this very important point –- He helps those with repentant hearts. He has promised to help us overcome the struggles our fallen nature always seem to stumble over. The writer of Hebrews refers to this as “the sin which so easily ensnares us” (Hebrews 12:1).
Several rabbinical sources believe this great change of heart will occur just before the Messianic era. The famous sage, Nachmanides, links the promise given by Moses to the promise recorded by Jeremiah which says, “I will put My law in their minds, and write it on their hearts” (Jeremiah 31:33). In other words, we are living in the day when this promise is set to come to fruition. I believe we are the generation He has ordained to love Him with all of our heart but I also believe that we must do our part in the process. Our part is, as declared by the writer of Hebrews: “Since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us.”
Blessings and Shalom,
Bill
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