Love the Lord with all your Mind

This fall I started the first semester of a Masters in Divinity degree. It’s an 82 hour degree that I hope to complete in three years and I’m starting to realize that might be a lofty goal. For the past few weeks, every spare moment has been spent reading or studying Hebrew vocabulary and I’ll be honest, it is absolutely exhausting. I’m constantly reminded that just as church ministry is a sacrifice, so is further preparation for ministry. The thing that keeps me going through weeks of long days and short nights is the call on our lives as Christians to love the Lord with all our minds (Matthew 22:37). I’m learning to see my education as an act of worship to God. God has revealed himself to us so that we can know him and love him. We will never come to a point in all eternity that we will fully know God. He is an infinite, so that means that for all of eternity we will keep learning more about him. Knowledge of God is meant to drive us to a deeper and richer love and worship for God. We will never be able to love God with all our minds but it is a goal that we should be striving for. Whether we pursue that goal in a formal education setting or in our own time personal time, it is a responsibility for all believers. If we are not intentionally pursuing a greater knowledge of God through Scripture and orthodox theological writings then we will develop an extremely distorted view of God that stems from personal experience. As a result, our view of God will look a lot more like ourselves rather than the God of the Bible. Our study of God should be done through reading the Bible as well as orthodox theological resources. There are countless resources available for us that have been written by people who have devoted their entire lives to studying God’s word and their conclusions agree with 2000 years of church history. These resources serve as aids when we study Scripture that help us make right interpretations. In turn we will be able to grown in a deeper love for God with our minds.

Here are just a few resources that that I recommend for you.
Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan
Systematic Theology by Wayne Grudem
Let the Nations be Glad by John Piper
Spectacular Sins by John Piper
Various Sermons by Charles Spurgeon
Knowing God by J. I. Packer
To the Golden Shore by Courtney Anderson
Delighting in the Trinity by Michael Reeves