In the Great Commission of Matthew 28:19-20, Jesus says, “Teach them to obey everything I have commanded you.” How do you teach someone to obey God? Not how do we teach someone to comply, but how do we teach someone to obey? Obedience is an issue of the heart. It is a choice of submission to God as an expression of love for Him. As Jesus said in John 14:15, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.”

So, how do we impact the heart of another person? God has always been concerned about the heart of the individual --the inner person. Joel 2:13 says, “Rend your heart and not your garments.” In the New Testament, Jesus also talks about the heart in Matthew 22:37, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.”

In the words of Jesus, the greatest command is to love God with our whole inner life. In the Old and New Testaments, there is significant overlap in the meanings of the words heart, soul and mind. Oftentimes, the Hebrew word mind is translated heart. In other places where the word soul appears in the original text it is translated mind. The point Jesus is making here is not to distinguish between the heart, soul and mind, but to say that loving God means to love Him with your entire inner life.

Our inner life includes how we think, how we handle our emotions, how we decide, and what we value. It is the inner life of an individual—the heart, soul and mind—that must be transformed through the process of disciple-making. The Apostle Paul says in Galatians 4:19: “My dear children, for whom I am again in the pains of childbirth until Christ is formed in you.” The core of disciple-making is seeing the person of Jesus Christ formed in the inner life of another.