with all your heart
This means your emotions. Your feelings and desires should be primarily for His will. Selfish desires and wants are important to Him, but they are secondary to His plan. The joy of your heart should not come from the fulfillment of your requests to Him, but rather because His plan is perfect.

and with all your soul
This means your life. We have been created with a life that can choose to seek God, His salvation, and His ways. We need to entrust the path of our physical life to Him, and truly love Him through our life by obeying His commands.

and with all your mind.
This means your thoughts. Sometimes wrong thoughts occur to us spontaneously, and we can not do anything about that. But we can choose to continue pursuing that thought or dismiss it from our mind. We need to make sure that our thoughts are pure and glorifying to God.

–Matthew 22:37

Beauty is important to girls. Make-up, nail polish, scrunchies, bobby pins, lotions, earrings, clothing, headbands, curling irons, tanning, dresses and rings. And perfume. Girls enjoy dressing nice and fixing themselves up to look their very best.

A long time ago, a certain girl wanted to look especially spectacular on her wedding day. She found a special bottle of perfume, made from very rare flowers. The perfume was the most pleasing aroma that she’d ever experienced. This perfume was very expensive, and so she saved up her money for a whole year to purchase the perfume.

Finally, she bought the perfume. She cherished that perfume, and locked it away for safekeeping. Every time she thought of the perfume, she would smile and think of her future husband. She knew that he would love her scent on their wedding day.

As the girl grew up, her innocence was lost and she forgot about that future husband. She sold her body to pay her rent and put food on her table. The perfume remained locked away, but it was never forgotten by the young woman. It was her most precious possession.

Eventually the girl’s profession was discovered, and she was to be publicly executed for her crime. But a Man stepped in just as she was about to be executed. He challenged the executioners: let the man who has never done wrong be the first to harm her. One by one, people trickled away.

The girl was overwhelmed with gratitude toward the Man. He revealed to her that He was the Savior of all men, and to place her trust in Him.

Here’s the cool part: she did. The girl’s name was Mary, and she became one of Jesus’ followers. She realized that He was King, and she worshipped Him by emptying the bottle of her expensive perfume on His feet. Talk about worship! She gave her most precious possession to her Lord. And yet, she probably felt that her bottle of perfume was so little compared what He had done for her.

Today, the average salary is $40,000-50,000. Mary poured out a $50,000 bottle of perfume onto her Savior’s feet. But more than that, she gave up something she had saved for her husband–something very close to her heart.

Mary gave of her possessions and of her heart, because her Savior is worthy of all worship.

What do you give Him?

One day a group of scientists got together and decided that man had come a long way and no longer needed God. So they picked one scientist to go and tell Him that they were done with Him.

The scientist walked up to God and said, “God, we’ve decided that we no longer need you. We’re to the point that we can clone people and do many miraculous things, so why don’t you just go on and get lost.”

God listened very patiently and kindly to the man and after the scientist was done talking, God said, “Very well, how about this, let’s say we have a man making contest.” To which the scientist replied, “OK, great!”

But God added, “Now, we’re going to do this just like I did back in the old days with Adam.”

The scientist said, “Sure, no problem” and bent down and grabbed himself a handful of dirt.

God just looked at him and said, “No, no, no. You go get your own dirt!”

• There are no absolutes.
• No one thinks for themselves: our culture shapes the way we view life and process our environment.
• Reality is individual: what I think is real is real for me, but may not be for you.
• Nothing can be proven for sure by science or argument.
• Whatever a person believes or says is completely right and valid for that person.

Heard these statements before? These are all beliefs that permeate our institutions and the culture that we live in. Chances are you’ve heard someone say or allude to more than one of these ideas. Maybe even in your Bible-believing church.

You might be surprised to learn that all of these statements are part of a single belief system. It is known as postmodernism and is the prevailing worldview in our culture today. It is not a religion, but rather a set of accepted beliefs.

One postmodernistic buzzword floating around is tolerance. At first glimpse, tolerance might sound like a great plan for us to all get along and love people of other beliefs. It would be, if we follow the traditional definition for tolerance: love the sinner, but not his sin. However, postmodernist tolerance demands that we ignore sin altogether: love each individual and accept his personal moral standards. That definition presupposes that each person is right in his beliefs, religion, and morals. But that is NOT what the Bible teaches.

“Jesus answered: ‘I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.’”

–John 14:6

The statements at the beginning of this entry are postmodernistic, and postmodernism does not cooperate with Biblical Christianity. It is impossible to believe a postmodern doctrine and follow the Lord Jesus Christ. He does not tolerate other gods (Deut. 4:24), He is real and absolute (John 1:1), and He is the ONLY Way (John 14:6).

This semester, I have an overwhelming amount of information coming at me. The Wall Street Journal, political blogs, RSS feeds, not to mention textbooks. Professors are snatching up every last second of my life.

I live in a world where 95% of my colleagues are not saved and view education as top priority. This means that most of my time is spent taking in secular knowledge. I thoroughly love what I’m learning, but my intellect is increasing at the expense of my walk with the Lord. So much of my brain is in college that the rest is essentially useless. Focusing on the spiritual world is difficult when everyone else is focussed on knowing the physical world. My particular major is a very pragmatic and somewhat unemotional course of study, and doesn’t exactly work hand-in-glove with a Christ-centered worldview.

Time-management is a struggle for a great number of people, but it is imperative that I learn it quickly so I can spend more time with my Savior. I miss Him.

“Not only was the teacher wise, but also he imparted knowledge to the people. He pondered and searched out and set in order many proverbs. The Teacher set out to find the right words, and what he wrote was upright and true. The words of the wise are like goads, their collected sayings like firmly embedded nails–given by one Shepherd. Be warned, my son, of anything in addition to them. Of making many books there is no end, and much study wearies the body. Now all has been heard, here is the conclusion of the matter. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man.”

Ecclesiastes 12:9-13