Category Archives: Ways of loving God

This is the last of a series of sermons on loving God with all our heart, mind, soul and strength. Scroll down to read the first one.

What does it mean to love God with all our strength, as Jesus commands? Why would someone who knows how to make galaxies be remotely interested in our ability to do things? It’s not like he needs us to help carry his luggage. Continue reading →

Today, I’m talking about an aspect of what it means to love God with our physical strength, with the capabilities of our bodies. I want to look at the ways in which we encounter God with our physical senses. Continue reading →

Jesus calls us to love God with our souls. And what I want to talk about this morning under the heading of ‘soul’ is our sense of who we are in ourselves. Not who we are in relation to other people: the roles we have, the relationships we’re in. But our inner life. The sense of who we really are inside. Our inner experience and sense of self and identity. Who we are when we’re on our own. Continue reading →

The Bible isn’t just a static set of facts. It’s not a neatly-catalogued array of data. Actually, most of it is narrative and poetry. And it’s a very dynamic, diverse set of accounts of the interactions between people and God. And the people involved are themselves often very troublesome. Sceptical. Argumentative. Slow to learn. Full of difficult questions. Continue reading →

What does it mean to love someone with our whole mind? It sounds a surprising thing to say. You don’t normally find Valentine cards on sale with the words: ‘My darling, I love you with all my mind.’ Not even in Cambridge. It would sound as if the recipient were regarded as an interesting specimen for scientific analysis. Continue reading →

Loving God with our hearts can sound like a very straightforward thing. God loves us. We love God. Nice warm feeling. Everyone’s happy. But God is far from straightforward, life is messy, and the human heart has a few complications of its own. And so, as with any relationship, knowing God involves feelings which may not always be uniformly positive. In fact, in the Bible, the various human responses to God include bafflement, terror, disapproval, shame, impatience and total exasperation. Continue reading →

This term’s morning sermons explore some different aspects of what it means to love God with all that we are. And we’re starting with what Jesus mentions first: the heart. After all, it’s the obvious place to start when talking about love Continue reading →