4 “Listen, Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. 5 Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength. 6 These words that I am giving you today are to be in your heart. 7 Repeat them to your children. Talk about them when you sit in your house and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. 8 Bind them as a sign on your hand and let them be a symbol on your forehead. 9 Write them on the doorposts of your house and on your city gates.
Deuteronomy 6:4-9, CSB
In the last two chapters we looked at Romans 12:1-2: and the idea of being a living sacrifice.
The concept of being a living sacrifice and presenting our bodies – or rather our entire selves – is one that Jewish readers of the text would have been very familiar with.
In Deuteronomy 6, after sharing the 10 Commandments with the people of Israel, Moses gives them The Greatest Commandment (The Shema): “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength.”
This commandment is so important to the Jewish religion that it is an integral part of their daily prayer.
He says to them that these words should be engraved upon their hearts. The love of God (the greatest commandment) should become an integral part of who they are. Unlike modern Western thought which largely restricts the ‘heart’ as the metaphorical seat for feelings, for the Old Testament Israelites it symbolized the very core of the person – the seat of the personality, the will, intellect, reason, and conscience – the totality of the inner life. It is from the heart – from the inner life – that all our words and deeds (the outer life) flow.
Therefore, the heart must be renewed. The inner man must be renewed.
And the rest of this command offers some practical guidance as to how this renewal can be achieved.
These words should be repeated to their children, talked about in the home, on the road, in all their comings and goings, even in their lying down and getting up. In times of business and in times of rest, they must remember the Lord in all they do, the Word of the Lord being continually in their mouths.
They were to bind these words as a sign on their hands and a symbol on their foreheads.
Although figurative in nature, the Jewish people took this quite literally and to this day many Jewish men still wear little phylacteries – small leather boxes containing Hebrew texts – at morning prayer as a physical reminder to keep the Law. These boxes are called ‘tefillin’ – and serves as a reminder that all of our thoughts and all of our deeds must be aligned with the Word and Will of God.
Finally, they were to affix the command – the Shema – to the doorposts of their homes, and city gates – a constant reminder of the command to love the Lord with all our heart, soul, and strength.
In all of this we see a call to remember the Lord – in our coming and going, our working and resting, at home with our family and out in public with our neighbors.
As Christians we should be building altars of remembrance in every facet of our lives – altars on which to burn the incense of our worship and adoration to the Lord.
The truth is what goes into the body affects what comes out – the things we consume are the same things that consume us.
We need to make sure that we use all of our strength – our physical ability – to do things that will lead to the renewing of our minds.
The Israelites were told to keep the Word of the Lord in their mouths. How often do we spend thinking about, never mind discussing, the Bible? How much time do we spend wrestling with, and trying to understand the Truth of His Word?
How much of our time do we spend in discussing this Truth with our family? Engaging with each other in dialogue and growing together? How does our family worship time look? Do we even practice it at all?
Do you read the Word with your spouse and children? Do you pray with them? Is His Word affixed upon the doorposts of our homes?
How about our neighbors, colleagues, and friends? The people, places and things you interact with on a daily basis? How are you remembering God in those relationships?
Are we remembering the Lord in all of our interactions? The people, places and things we encounter on a daily basis? Is His Word bound to our arms and foreheads?
What are we feeding our brains with? Doom scrolling on social media, endless streams of viral videos and memes, entertainment? How are we remembering the Lord in regard to the media we consume?
A good place to start in this process of mind renewal is to make an intentional decision to pursue the practice of one or more Spiritual Disciplines.
Choose a time of day and place – and then commit to following through.
Your commitment might look like this:
- I commit to spending 10 minutes of my lunchbreak at work in quiet prayer for my colleagues and their families.
- I commit to fellowshipping with my family by having family Scripture reading time at 18:00 every evening. We will read and discuss one chapter at a time.
- I commit to take a break from social media and follow a Bible reading plan, reading with my spouse before going to bed rather than scrolling through Facebook until I fall asleep. (There are many great apps for this – like the YouVersion Bible or Logos).
- I commit to having a weekly coffee with a friend and to make a point of praying with them.
In doing this I want you to really think of making a commitment above and beyond – outside of – your regular quiet devotional time.
This is not so much about fitting God into your schedule as it is about remembering and involving God in the normal everyday rhythms of your day-to-day life.
This is about building little altars on which you can offer yourself to Him daily, so that He can do His work, the work of renewal and restoration in you – and eventually through you as you become a living love letter, a living testimony of His goodness and grace.
If you do these small things, build these seemingly insignificant habits, you will see significant changes in your workplace, your marriage, your home, even your community as you start involving God more and more in the daily rhythms of your life.
As Moses said, regarding this command, in Deuteronomy 6:1-3:
“This is the command — the statutes and ordinances — the Lord your God has commanded me to teach you, so that you may follow them in the land you are about to enter and possess. Do this so that you may fear the Lord your God all the days of your life by keeping all his statutes and commands I am giving you, your son, and your grandson, and so that you may have a long life. Listen, Israel, and be careful to follow them, so that you may prosper and multiply greatly, because the Lord, the God of your ancestors, has promised you a land flowing with milk and honey.”