What is the Point?: Discovering Life's Deeper Meaning and Purpose by Misty Edwards Page B

the great prophet, the great philosopher, the great psychologist, and God Himself is explaining both God and humans to those who have ears to hear. It is the Creator talking, and He is not commanding us to do something that is beyond what we were designed to do. It is love that He is after. He is after our heart. The mystery of our life is found in this truth.
    Jesus is saying that loving Him is the first commandment. It is first in priority to Him and to His Father. It is the preeminent command and the pinnacle of all that He has spoken. It is also the greatest commandment, because it has the greatest impact on us, on Him, and literally on the earth. When we love Him with this kind of wholeness, we are what we were created to be. It is just, right, and good. This is righteousness in action. We fulfill our primary purpose in this love. It is the great commandment, and it is the greatest calling.
    Some who seek to know God’s will for their life focus on knowing what they are supposed to do instead of who they are supposed to become. When they speak of wanting the greatest calling, they refer to the size of their ministry instead of the size of their heart. The greatest grace we can receive is the anointing to feel God’s love and to express it. It brings the greatest freedom and has the greatest reward.
    I read this and thought, “What? The first and the greatest?” It was perplexing because on the surface it seemed too simple to be the first and the greatest. Yet as I started trying to do it, I found it was the trigger that caused a chain reaction in my heart that led to many life-altering decisions, both internally and externally. These sentences from the lips of Jesus started a fire in my soul and radically changed the course of my life. My purpose in life was to please Jesus, and here He is telling me what pleases Him. So my purpose was to live for love, but what was love?
    I drank from the words of Jesus and struggled with their application. When I decided to “live for love,” I liked the feeling of it but didn’t know what it meant. “Love? OK . . . and then what?” I looked up at Him and said, “OK, let’s do it. I’m going to love You with all of my heart, soul, mind, and strength . . . OK, now what? I love You. You love Me.” I sang a few songs, danced, and cried during the Sunday morning worship time. “OK . . . ” I lit a candle and sat in a room for a while talking to the Invisible. “I love You. You love me. Is this what You wanted? Is this what You were saying was the pinnacle and purpose of my life? Surely there’s more to it than this.”
    Then I started trying to love Him with “all.” It was more than an emotion because of a good worship song and more than an hour of devotional time in the morning. I read this verse and thought, “He wants all of me.” He wanted to be involved in every part of my day, right down to the thoughts I think and the emotions I feel. I was overwhelmed with such a demand but excited to have an aim. It was more than a list of dos and don’ts. This was up close and personal. This was intimate and invasive.
    Three of the four ways He lists for us to love Him are primarily internal. Only He can see it working. This command had nothing to do with impressing people or getting the applause of man. This commandment brought me right before the Audience of One and turned my primary mode of living internal, because that is where He was and that is where He was watching and measuring me.
    The inner world of the human is one of the most intriguing realities in all of creation. We spend the majority of our lives inside of ourselves. We are sleeping, thinking quietly, processing images, and having a continual conversation in our heads. I could be in a stadium filled with eighty thousand people, and we are all thinking eighty thousand different things, having eighty thousand conversations in our own heads, living in a world of our own, like a universe of worlds inhabiting a