Love the Lord your God with your Very Muchness

One of the most famous passages of scripture is Deuteronomy 6:5

Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.[a] 5 Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.

Do you know what it’s really like to Love the Lord with all your strength?

Does it mean that he want’s us to be in the gym lifting as much as we physically can?

What does it mean to truly LOVE the Lord your God? Write him love songs? Send him flowers? Memorize his favorite love languages?

This word “strength” is really the Hebrew Word Me’od. This doesn’t mean “Strength” but rather “very” or “muchness”.

Ancient-Hebrew.org has a great little excerpt about this:

This word is used throughout the Hebrew text as an adverb, intensifying a verb, and is usually translated as very, greatly, or much. This is the only time this word appears as a noun and is best translated as "muchness." This idea of muchness is expanding on the previous two ways we are to love Yahweh, first with our mind, then with our body, and now with everything we have.

This is literally saying “Love the Lord your God with all your VERY ESSENCE, Your Very Everything.

So LOVE the Lord with you very inner being- your hopes, your passions, your thoughts, your wishes and EVERYTHING you have in you.