In Matthew 22:37 and Deuteronomy 6:5 (And He said to him, " 'You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.' ) what I saw was the intensity and wholeheartedness which I should obey God. If we are to love God with all our heart and soul and mind, and if obedience is a major part of such love, then it follows that we are to obey Him with all our heart, soul, and mind. We are to put everything we have into obedience to Him.
My observation is that most of us who are believers practice what I call a "cruise-control” approach to to obedience. Many cars today have a convenient feature called cruise-control. When you are driving on the highway you can accelerate to your desired speed push the cruise-control button, and take your foot from the accelerator pedal. Some mechanism attached to the engine will then maintain your desired speed and you can ease back and relax a little. You don't have to watch your speedometer to make sure you're not going to get a ticket for speeding, and you no longer have to experience the fatigue that comes with constant foot pressure on the accelerator. It's a very convenient and relatively relaxing. It's a great feature on cars.
However, we tend to obey God in the same way. To continue the driving analogy, we press the accelerator pedal of obedience until we have brought our behavior up to a certain level or “speed”. The level of obedience is most often determined by the behavior standard of other Christians around us. We don't want to lag behind them because we want to be as spiritual as they are. At the same time, we're not eager to forge ahead of them because we wouldn't want to be different. We want to just comfortably blend in with level of obedience of those around us.
Once we have arrived at this comfortable level of obedience we push the “cruise-control” button in our hearts, ease back, and relax. Our particular Christian culture then takes over and keeps us going at the accepted level of conduct. We don't have to experience the fatigue that comes with seeking to obey Him with all our heart, soul, and mind. This then is what I call “cruise-control” obedience, and I fear it is descriptive of many of us much, if not all, of the time.
By contrast consider race-car drivers. They wouldn't think of using cruise control. They are not interested in blending in with speed of those around them. They are not out for a Sunday afternoon drive. They want to win the race.
Race-car drivers are totally focused on their driving. There is always on the accelerator as they try to push their car to the outer limits of its mechanical ability and endurance. Their eye is always on the track as they press to its limit their own skill in negotiating the turns on the track and its hazards of other cars around them. They are driving with all their heart, soul, and mind.
This is what it means to love God with all our heart and soul and mind. It means, in the words of Hebrews 12:14, to “make every effort...to be holy”, and in the words of the apostle Peter, to “make every effort” to add to our faith the various facets of Christian character (2 Peter 1:5-7).
The apostle Paul didn't have auto races and cruise controls to use as illustrations, so he used the metaphor of a foot race. Here is how is how he put it in 1 Corinthians 9:24-27:
"Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize. Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training. They do it to get a crown that will not last, but we do it for a crown that will last forever. Therefore I do not run like the man running aimlessly: I do not fight like a man beating the air. No I beat my body and make it my slave so that after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified for the prize."
Do you see the similarity to our contemporary illustration? The foot racer running aimlessly or the boxer beating the air is the same person out for a Sunday drive with his or her cruise control on. The runner striving for the prize who goes into strict training and beats his or her body – that is, subdues its desires – is like the race-car driver who drives with all his or her heart and soul and mind. And Moses and Jesus and Paul all said this is the way we should live the Christian life.
God is not impressed with our worship on Sunday morning at church if we are practicing “cruise-control” obedience the rest of the week. You may sing with reverent zest or great emotional fervor but your worship is only as pleasing to God as the obedience that accompanies it.
This is why the Holy Spirit was creating this sense of uneasiness in my mind over my professed love for God. I wasn't living with some flagrant sin in my life, I was simply living a "cruise-control” mode of obedience. I had lost the commitment and intensity that is implied in the “pursuit” of holiness. I wasn't seeking to obey God's law with all my heart and soul and mind. Instead I had settled into a comfortable routine, in which there were no major vices, but neither was there an all-out effort to obey God in every area of life, especially in interpersonal relationships.
We should delight in God. We should eagerly anticipate fellowship with Him during the quiet time and even throughout the entire day. It is healthy to want to gaze upon His beauty and to seek Him in His temple. The Westminster Shorter Catechism answers the question “What is the chief end of man?” by saying, “Man's chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever” We are not not only to glorify God, we are to enjoy Him forever, both in this life and in eternity.
So the enjoyment of God and the desire to fellowship with Him and to worship Him are certainly important dimensions of our love to God. But the most important dimension is our wholehearted obedience: our desire to obey Him with all our heart, soul, and mind.
From “The Disciple of Grace”
by Jerry Bridges
Navpress 2006 (pp 118-121)
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