The NIV 365 Day Devotional

Loving God With Your Mind

Loving God with our minds isn’t just feeling affection toward him. It’s meditating and engaging regularly with the Bible.  We do this by reading closely, reflecting on how different parts of Scripture fit together and asking questions as we read.

Loving God with our minds isn’t about head knowledge alone. We need both knowledge about God and experiential knowledge of who God is in relationship with us.

Experience comes from wrestling with questions and listening for God’s answers. None of our relationships would flourish if we listened passively but never engaged in conversation. We’re meant to be in conversation with God, always seeking to know and understand him more.

Asking questions and listening for answers is especially important when encountering difficult passages in the Bible. God isn’t offended when we ask questions.  That’s how we get to know him better and learn to trust him.

We can also look to our Christian brothers and sisters who have lived before us. From the early days of the church, Christians have been wrestling with the Bible, meditating on its meaning and often writing down their own thoughts and experiences for others to follow.

As Hebrews 12:1 says, we are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses, and we can follow the same paths others have as they walked with God before us.

The more we learn and follow God, the more we realize how much we don’t know. While we’ll never fully know all the Bible has to say, the more we read and study it, the more we’ll grow in our love for God.

Taken from The NIV Telos Bible.