Ok so Deuteronomy made the choice for a verse pretty easy.
“Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. 5 You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might .” Dt 6:4–5 (The Eerdmans Bible dictionary (p. 937)).
Eerdmans defines the Shema as
“A confession of faith, originally Deut. 6:4 but from the second century A.D. including also vv. 5–9; 11:13–21; Num. 15:37–41, recited morning and evening by Jews to the present. The name of the Shema comes from the first word of Deut. 6:4, Heb. šema˓ “hear.” The recitation of the Shema came to be thought of as the minimum of study of the Torah. Evidence indicates that Jesus and the early Church considered the confession of God’s unity and the commandment to love God that together constitute the first two verses of the Shema (and perhaps the entire content of an early form of the confession) as a fundamental summation of the Torah (Mark 12:28–34 par.; Rom. 3:30; 1 Cor. 8:4; Jas. 2:19; 1 John 4:20). ”
Let’s just say this verse has credentials. The English language misses a little bit of the punch of the shema. The Israelites knew that “loving the Lord your God with all your” meant there was a change in your actions that began in the heart and soul and came to fruition with your might. To declare you loved the Lord, your thinking and actions must line up with God’s direction. Jesus made a similar statement in Luke 6:46 “Why do you call me Lord, Lord and do not do what I command?” His implication held that if He was your Lord, you did do what He commanded. Not popular but accurate.
So do we love the Lord with all our heart with all our soul and with all our might? This is revealed in how we think and live. More examining like last week. All for now.