Ministering to a Woman’s Heart, Soul, Mind, and Strength预览

DAY 2: Loving One Another Fully

Living as a biblical woman entails a true act of worship: loving God and others fully, with every part of our being. When we understand this command and put it into practice, we will “not be far from the kingdom of God” (Mark 12:34). In other words, we will be living the way that God intended for us to live.

It’s important, then, that when it comes to your own walk with God or ministering to other women, that you’re considering the whole woman: heart, mind, soul, and strength. We love our neighbor more fully because it helps her worship God better. It also brings her to the place of loving her neighbor more fully, creating a domino effect as others are impacted by this love.

God has called us to live in community with one another, loving one another as neighbors, to help us point out those areas of struggle and help us rectify them. We are blind, many times, to our own sin; one aspect of loving neighbor is compassionately identifying those areas of sin and weakness and spurring one another on towards Christlikeness and Christian maturity (Eph. 4:15).

Today, let’s focus on what it means to love God with our whole hearts. 

Ministering to the heart

What would it look like to minister to other women’s hearts? Proverbs 20:5 (ESV) tells us, “The purpose in a man's heart is like deep water, but a man of understanding will draw it out.” When we consider our sisters and brothers, quite often we first notice external things like what they say and do. But the writer of Proverbs reminds us that it is possible to look deeper, to be women who can truly understand and draw out the internal things hidden below the surface, driving our behavior. To do this, though, we must get at a woman’s heart: her emotions, her motivations, and her desires.

So often, we as women are driven by these things. Many of us are feelers; we feel something and act on it. And undergirding those feelings are beliefs (Rom. 10:10), values (Matt. 6:21), intentions (Heb. 4:12), and other motivators. When we love one another fully, addressing the heart and all that is contained within it, our ministry is much more effective. Given that “God’s love has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit” (Rom. 5:5), He cares tremendously about our hearts, and so should we.

Reflect: 

• How might your life be different today if you had received whole-person ministry growing up?