"Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength."

         The Great Commandment is to love God. We are to love God with all our heart, and with all our soul and with all our strength. "Heart," "soul" and "strength" are all aspects of what we call "me." In other words, "all of me" is to love God. That is what we are to do with our lives.

First we are to love God with our whole heart. In modern English we think of the heart as the place of love, of emotion, of feelings. But the Hebrew word for "heart" meant more what we would call "mind" or "will." We are to love God by learning his Word. We are to love God in the way we think. We love God by agreeing with his will. This is what we see Jesus doing in the Gospels.

         So in Confirmation we met each week and slowly went through the entire Bible. This was not new material to you. You knew most of the stories from Sunday School, VBS, and Bible story books in your homes. But this may have been the first time you studied the entire Bible, and tried to put the whole story together with timelines and maps and pictures.

         The Old Testament is not learned in one reading. It is a long and complicated story. I think it took me three times through before I really grasped it whole. So please be patient and keep reading and studying. In the world that we live in, you need more than a Confirmation education for your faith to thrive, so that you can truly love God with your mind. You need to continue to study the Bible and see it as a life-long process. Never stop learning God's Word.

         We met a man in the Old Testament, Ezra, who gave his life to learning and teaching God's Word. I said, somewhat jokingly, that he was the first Confirmation teacher. But I do firmly believe that the world needs many people who will hear the call to be like Ezra, to give their lives to teaching God's Word. In a way I see myself in the line of Ezra. What I find is that in that calling, I am constantly challenged by those who want me to be Nehemiah. The world, and to some extent the church, will always want wall builders, someone whose work is more practical, more results-oriented. But the calling to be an Ezra will always be central if we are truly to learn what it means to love God with all our heart, with our mind, so that our will might conform to His.

         Second, we are to love God with our souls. "Soul" is another word for "self," the self in relationship to God. So the next aspect of Confirmation has been to help you build a relationship with God. This part connects with your experiences at camp, on retreats and with the faith you learn at home. It is that relationship with God that helps you when you encounter difficult things in life. Life does not go as we hope it will. For everyone there are times of loss, of grief, of disappointment. It is in those times that we can learn to rely on God who is with us and also for us. In those times we learn to know God, who gave his only son and saw him die on a cross. We come to know God who weeps with us, comforts us, and strengthens us.

         This part of loving God does not have so much to do with study as it does with learning to pray, learning to trust. So God's Word not only teaches us, but it also gives us comfort, and it renews us in hope. Several of you have found this relationship with God to come alive in special ways at camp. It seems to take a week away in such a place for God to speak to our hearts. The world will always want you to be terribly busy, focused entirely on its tasks. It is not easy, but you have to make a commitment to love God with your soul. This is where, sadly, many people find their faith grows cold with the years. What we have learned is that one hour of church per week is not enough to meet the demands and stresses of the world we live in. You need to develop a life of prayer.

         So there is a calling to our souls to love God. This is the call to be like David. In the midst of being a king, with all its demands, David took time for his soul. He wrote Psalms.          "The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want."

He also experienced times of confessing his sin and repenting.

         "Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me."

The call to be a David, to love God with your soul, will constantly be challenged in this life. For there are those who want you to be, not David, but Solomon. Solomon, you see, was well educated, learned, a grade-A student, successful and wealthy. Solomon gained the word, but he lost his soul.

         Don't lose your soul. Love God with all your heart, and all your soul.

         Finally we are to love God with all our strength. The word for "strength" can also be translated "substance" or even "wealth." Strength is our intelligence, our skill and ability, our mental and physical power. So the third part of Confirmation is our desire for you to be active in your faith. This connects with missions trips and experiences of service in the community and in the church. We want you now to become members of the church, and by that we mean we are eager for you to serve God by singing on a worship team or in the choir, by helping with the children's ministry and becoming teachers, by witnessing to your friends, by helping the poor, by becoming leaders. In other words, what you have learned and seen, now put into practice. Let your faith become active in love.

         Here is the call of Jesus to his disciples. "Go into all the world and make disciples." Now, that will be challenged, too. For there are those who will want you to be more like Jacob. You remember Jacob was one who was always receiving and never giving. He always used his strength for himself. He wanted the blessing and the birthright. He deceived and tricked his way through life, getting rich in the process. But one night he wrestled with an angel, and in the morning the angel touched his hip, and it slowed him down, and he walked with a limp. God took away his strength, so he could deal with his soul. And Jacob became a new person, and he was given the name Israel.

         Please remember that Jesus does not make us strong for our own benefit. Please remember that church is not the place to soak up the blessings of God, to grow spiritually fat on all the wonderful teaching and preaching and music and fellowship. No, we are not to love God for our own benefit, but we are to learn service, we are to be active in faith, we are to lead and work and do the will of God. We are to love God with our strength, and obey his commission to go and make disciples of all nations. Love God with your heart and your soul and your strength.

         Amen.