Foundations-The Great Commandment

In this episode, we explore the Great Commandment Jesus gave in Matthew 22:37–40: to love God with all our heart, soul, and mind, and to love our neighbor as ourselves. These words are more than a simple call to kindness—they reveal the foundation of a life rooted in Christ.

Nick Helps us explore the depth of what  means to love God completely, how that love transforms the way we see and serve others, and why every act of true discipleship flows from these two commands. When our relationship with God is first, love for others becomes more than an obligation; it becomes the natural fruit of a changed heart.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

So the vibe today is actually going to be entering into the Great Commandment. Now, this particular episode kind of excites me because it's the first time that I expose this ancient philosophy with our modern reality. That these two things are not like in disagreement with one another, that they're actually very cohesive. So as we enter in today and we start talking about the Great Commitment and some different parts of it, I'm going to introduce what I call the four growth areas. And I think you're gonna get something out of this. I love even teaching about this because every time I do, I get a little bit more excited that that man, I want people to see this, I want people to know this because it will help you on your journey. If you think it might, buckle up and join me. And remember to stay curious, my friends.

SPEAKER_00 1:04

Hey friends, welcome to the Be Rooted Podcast with your host, Nick Kugler, author, discipler, and your guide on this journey. Around here, we mix ancient and modern wisdom with real life principles so that you can grow deep roots and live out your faith intentionally. So let's stay curious and dive in.

SPEAKER_01 1:25

All right. Well, today we're gonna talk about one of my favorite things to talk about. It's one of the spots of the that kind of gets missed. And in the Great Commandment, um I've heard pastors um reference this scripture a lot, but they usually reference it, love God, love others. And then sometimes they throw in um with your whole self. Well, this those things are true. We are to love God, we are to love others, and we are to love them with our whole selves. But I will reference you to one of the other videos that I've that I've spoken about self, so I won't spend too much time on that. Go back and listen to that one if you haven't yet. But what I see is there's what I call a love sandwich. That to love God is one major slice of the bread, and to love others in self is the other slice of the bread. And this space in between, Jesus repeats four times the phrase, with all. And we just naturally say, well, well, that's just all of you, which is true. But he clarifies four different areas, and I call these the four growth areas that are pivotal to your discipleship. And it's to love God with all your heart, with all your mind, with all your soul, and with all your strength. Now, I've spent a lot of time just digging into what these words meant in the original language and different options of uh of ways that they might be able to be um translated into our current understanding of what these words meant. See, I'm not an expert of all the Bible, but man, I have spent a lot of time on these. So I want to help by maybe giving you a few other options that are more close to the vernacular that we would use today. So for me, I think heart is your values, I think mind is your knowledge. I'm gonna run out of space, so I'm gonna abbreviate that. Soul is your identity, is your identity, ID, and strength is your ability. See, your when your values align with the heart of God, they will motivate you to do the things of God. When you cultivate the abilities that God has given you, either talents or experiences that have given you the talents, and you use them for the glory of God, then you are living within your strengths. When you use your mind to think rightly about God and about your circumstances, and when you understand who you are in Him and you receive your identity from Him, that's what these four areas are leaning into. Like there are other ways that I have seen these show up, even in secular language. Like, um, some of the ways that I have heard this is what we've what I like to term the uh four-dimensional person, like the four-dimensional self. That each one of us is wired in a way that that we that we are um creatures uh of this likeness. We are we are physical beings, we are emotional beings, we are spiritual beings, and we are intellectual beings. Now, I didn't do those in order, but the physical is is your ability, is your strength, is what you've been, the gifts you've been granted. Your your emotional is the motivation that propels you, which is exposed by your values. Your your spirit is your identity in him, right? You see the correlation? Now I see these all over the place, and maybe I see them because I've studied them more deeply, but they just simply show up. Well, you see over here there's an image, and and I want you to recognize this image because this is actually the thing that I want to remind you what your discipleship journey should and could and will likely look like. It is a vision that God gave me years ago, and he has actually exposed a lot of truths through this. See, you'll see the four areas here, and and we're in here, here, here, and here. The four triangles represent the four areas of growth of the great commandment. And there is some significance in these. There's a reason why this bottom arrow in my podcast image shows up below the surface. And I think it's important for you to understand that. See, uh, this line of your reality that's there's the tree above, and there's the roots below, that as you grow in this area, that you everything goes through that and comes out. It is your identity in Him, that the bottom um triangle represents what you believe to be true about you. And is it in alignment with what God believes to be true about you? It is your biblical, your God-given identity. And if you get that right, then it flows into your values. How does your heart align with the heart of God? It flows into your knowledge. What are you thinking? What is your mind pursuing? How are you rightly thinking about God and others? And it and it helps you to cultivate your abilities. And these things are all intertwined. Like the tree shows, all of the branches that come from above, they they mesh in and out and they sway with your with your current circumstance. You you can't always distinguish between them because your values are what drive you. Your your knowledge impacts your values, and your ability to do something with that will reinforce your values or your knowledge. See, they they all kind of work together, but the reality is you will be growing or not growing in these areas. And if you focus too much on one and neglect the others, then you will become unbalanced and unhealthy. See, if you focus solely on the knowledge aspect of growth, scripture says that you'll be puffed up because knowledge puffs up, but love edifies. If you focus solely on just your emotions, then you'll ultimately be driven by your emotions. If you don't have a right understanding of God and his law and his precepts and his love for you through those, then you're just simply going to sway with whatever emotion you have at the moment. When your emotions weren't designed to rule you, they were written designed to inform you of what's going on in your heart and around you. And if you only focus on your ability, then all you're gonna do is serve. And how are you ever gonna know if you're serving for the right reasons? How are you ever gonna know if you're serving in the right spaces? How are you ever gonna grow to know him better if you don't invest in your knowledge of him? How are you ever gonna grow to know yourself to allow your identity to flow up through those things into other areas? One of the spaces that I have heard this is a guy by the name of Josh McDowell. I heard a podcast a while back ago, um, and he put it this way, and this is actually from uh extrapolated from a Columbia research project, completely secular, um, that wanted to determine a person's behavior. And he said this. He says, ultimately the behavior, which is the thing above the surface that we see, is determined by your values. The things that motivate you will determine your behavior. So what drives your values? And he says it's your beliefs. But what determines your beliefs? It's your relationships. Now, this is what I think is beautiful about how science lines up with with the Bible. Because we're discovering that your behavior is determined ultimately by your relationships, and why is important. Because he actually says that your relationships, and I think this is proven in other psychological circles, your relationships help to determine your identity. So what he's really saying is that your identity informs that which you believe to be true about yourself, that ultimately drives your behavior through your emotions and determines what you do with your abilities. See, I think all science, like social science, soft science, hard science, is just our God-given drive to discover the who God is in nature and creation. And psychology is helping us to understand the image of God imprinted on us. And when we see that these things line up, that that there's nothing new under the sun, we can go, okay, but here's here's another thing. This isn't just a linear process this way, because we know that our behaviors affect our identity. That the things that I do will determine what I believe to be true about myself, the things I'm good at, the things I'm told that I'm good at, the things that I'm told I should be good at, that I'm not so good at. Those things influence our identity. That's our understanding of self. But if we are only driven by our emotions, that's going to affect our identity. And the things that we believe to be true about self are going to impact our emotions because our values are going to be impacted by the undergirding of what we believe to be true. One of the um it might be like simplistic, but one of the ways I like to articulate this is if if somebody goes out to the parking lot right now and and keys that Lexus, I'm not, it's not gonna bother me. I will walk outside and I will look at that car and I'm like, man, that kind of stinks. I mean, that's an expensive car. Um, like, I feel bad for that guy. But if somebody goes out there and they key that Chevy truck, um, I'm gonna be mad. It's gonna stir up some emotions in me. Does the value stir my emotion? Like the the Lexus that is way more valuable than my truck may has no impact on my emotional response to that same action. Why? Because it's my truck. How is why would somebody do that to me? What did I do to them when they like I value that because it's my responsibility? You see, what if I go out there and somebody keys my truck and I get angry, that exposes something about me. It exposes something about the thing that I value. I value that truck. Why? Because I need it. I need it to get to work, I need it to do my stuff. I don't value it because it's this some precious thing, but it's mine and it's my responsibility. I don't overvalue the truck. If I needed to replace it, I would. And um, it has a little bit more sentimental value because it was my dad's truck before it was mine. But the reality is like when you have an emotion, it it under or exposes rather the things that you care about. And I want you to see that these are all connected, and and these triangles are all connected to one another. And the other thing that I would want you to see is that the the the phrase with all is intriguing to me. Can you ever complete your love of self? Is it ever finished? Um can you ever fully and 100% align your heart with the heart of God? Can you ever serve him to the extent where you're done serving him? Like you can you complete that? Can you ever know enough about him or enough about self that you don't have to learn anymore? No. This with all actually exposes the fact that you will always be growing, that you will never reach the end, that you you can't focus on all four because that's just impossible. But you can lean into all four when it's necessary. If you if you want to serve, but you don't know where to serve, you might want to learn what her God wants you to serve. You might want to maybe test your values. Ask yourself, what has God put inside of me that I truly value, I truly care about, so that I can use that to motivate me to serve. I don't know what God is passionate about. If I don't know that he has a heart for the widows and the fatherless, I don't even consider serving the widows and the fatherless. But I if I learn that, and I learn that he has a heart for the lost, and I and I learn that he has a heart for the for the loved, and that he's there for all of them, then you can begin to see that all of humanity is worthy of his love and worthy of your love and investment in them. And you can do that through your abilities. So I will be diving uh more deeply into each one of these in a in a future series where we can really we'll get in a little bit to into the Greek and into some of the spaces in the Bible where you can see Jesus performing this or helping people in these growth areas. But what I want you to see is that you will always be growing. And you shouldn't just invest in your intellectual knowledge. You shouldn't just enter into the space of emotions and ask yourself, you know, what do I value? You shouldn't only cultivate your abilities and your talents, and you shouldn't get stuck in this self discovery mode. Are all of them important? Yes, they are. And honestly, I do think if you're going to emphasize one of them, it's it's to emphasize this identity. Because if you don't get that at least close, then the other three will suffer. If you don't understand who you are in him and what he created you for and how he created you uniquely to expose his character and nature through you, through your image that you bear of his, it's gonna make it hard to do the others. Don't get stuck there. The two areas that I actually see are the most difficult in our culture are the values and the identity. Especially with guys, we have a guys in the church specifically. We can do the the ability thing pretty good. Like I got my abilities, I want to serve, you just show me where to serve and I'll serve. But don't ask me to look at my emotions. Don't ask me to enter into that. Don't ask me to dive into why I do what I do and what makes me angry or what makes me sad. That's unsafe. That's girly stuff. Yeah, no, that's godly stuff. Understanding who you are and what motivates you is pivotal in your growth. And your knowledge, it's important. But we're really good. We have a a full church culture and spectrum that gives you information after information after information after information. And some of them are really good at giving you both sides of the information and helping you to think rightly and philosophically, and others just give you a portion of information and make it difficult for you to think in a balanced way. But that's not it. If you get stuck in your head, then you're gonna miss your ability to love God and love others. So this is the intro to the four growth areas, and and I hope this begins to make sense to you. And as we dive in a little bit deeper in in future series, I want you to see how each one of these is not only a huge growth potential, but God, Jesus, is telling you to invest in these, to give all you have to these. And when you think you have reached the end, reach a little farther, dig a little deeper, drive your relationships a little bit deeper.

SPEAKER_00 20:51

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