Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.
Deuteronomy 6:4-9
During 2026, Peachtree Church is inviting everyone into Cultivate, a churchwide discipleship plan centered on the fruit of the Spirit and the kind of life God longs to grow in us. Throughout the year, we’ll explore how love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control take shape in everyday life through the Spirit’s work. Cultivate brings together worship, Scripture, group guides, and meaningful practices designed to meet you where you are and support growth in ways that fit your season. These twice-weekly devotionals are one way to stay connected, offering reflection and grounding for daily life with God. Whether you engage in many ways or just one, you’re invited to be part of this shared journey of becoming more rooted in who God has created and called you to be.
Devotional
A few weeks ago, my son came downstairs to our den while I was in the midst of reading my morning devotional. He climbed up on the couch and snuggled under some blankets, simply watching me as I sat in my beloved old recliner reading the Bible. After he had watched me for about five minutes or so, he asked me a question, “Why do you read the Bible every morning?” I paused in my reading to talk through the why behind my morning quiet time with the Lord. After we had talked for a bit, I realized a shift that I should have made the moment he entered; I read the rest of my devotional aloud. Whit sat and watched with a smile across his face, occasionally asking questions about what it was that we had just read together.
Our passage this morning is the prayer that a devout Jew is called to pray as they begin and end their day. This prayer is mostly known as the “Shema” for the first word of the prayer in Hebrew, and it is also the prayer that is the basis for what Jesus tells us in Matthew 22:34-40 (and parallel passages in Mark 12 and Luke 10) is the greatest commandment. The challenge for so many of us in these words from Deuteronomy is that we often focus on the word “Shema” which translates as “Hear,” rather than the word “Weahabta” which is the command to “Love.”
The command to love that occurs within this prayer is the center of how we are called to understand our relationship with the Lord. Still we need to dig a bit deeper as to what God means by the word, rather than how we tend to think about it from the modern American perspective. God’s desire for us to love him is that we would be in a deep and growing relationship with him, where we seek to spend time through prayer and study: hearing his word, learning his desires, and ultimately aligning our hearts with his heart and our wills with his will. This process to which we are all called doesn’t occur quickly or easily; it happens over time as we continue to keep our eyes not on the things that we think are the most important but on what God knows is the most important.
Just as we learn to deepen our relationships with the people we love by spending time with them, gaining understanding of who they are, and seeing the deeper meaning behind their words, so do we build our relationship with our Creator by seeking after him. The challenge that occurs for all of us in this regard, as in all of our relationships, is that it requires intentionality to do so.
For Reflection
- What are ways that you seek to grow in your love of God?
- What challenges do you face in deepening your relationship with him?
- How do you find help in the times when you do face a challenge in this manner?
Prayer
Lord God, we thank you that you ask us to love you. We thank you that the greatest thing that we can do is to seek after your will for our lives as we seek to build a relationship with you that will grow and that will last. Help us to listen to your word, to seek after the guidance of your spirit, and to always remember that your love is greater than our understanding of it can ever be. In Jesus’ name we pray; Amen.
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Devotionals