Beloved: grace, mercy and peace be yours immeasurably from God our Father and Jesus Christ our Lord. I am glad to welcome you into the month of July 2020, the first month in the second half of this year. And I pray that God will so occupy your heart with joy in this last half of the year that you will forget whatever pains or losses you experienced in the first half of the year, in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Now I want to enjoin you, as we begin this second half of the year, to be all-out for God in everything. In other words, don’t take half measures in your worship of God or go half way in your devotion to Him. Instead, give yourself fully to Him in worship and in service. That is because that is the only way to enjoy Him in all His fullness and also have His approval.
To say the fact, one of the reasons many in the church today are not having the kinds of glorious experiences they are supposed to be having in their walk with God is that they are not all-out for Him. They choose when they will obey Him and when they will not obey Him. And they choose when and how they will serve Him, instead of giving themselves to learning how to serve Him appropriately and adequately. Yet they complain all the time that God is not taking the matters of their lives very seriously. Can that ever be true?
David, in one of his Psalms, says, “With the merciful, you are merciful; with a man who is sincere, you are sincere; with the pure, you are pure; but with the crooked you are cunning.” (Ps 18:26-27CJB) Did you see that? It is the way you relate to God that will determine what you will experience in your walk in life. If you are all-out for God, then, He will be all-out for you. And if you try to be cunny in relating to Him, not putting your whole heart in your devotion to Him, He will also show Himself cunny to you. He will do this to let you know that He is not someone you can deceive. He knows everything about us and can tell whether our hearts are fully with Him and truly devoted to worshiping Him or not.
Look, for instance, at what is written about King Amaziah of Judah: “He did what was right in the eyes of the LORD, but not wholeheartedly.” (2Chron 25:2NIV) Think about that. This king, on the surface, seemed to be for God. That means he must have been talking and acting like somebody who loved and belonged to God. But God could tell that his heart was not right. So, at some point, what was really in his heart came out. He abandoned God for idols, despite all the victories and beautiful things he had enjoyed from his hand. And from the moment he abandoned him till the time he was brutally murdered, life never remained the same again for him. (Cf. 2Chro 25)
Therefore, examine yourself, as Paul says, to see whether your heart is totally for God or not (2Cor 13:5). Test yourself and be certain that your so-called faith in God is not a lie. Otherwise, apart from the fact that you will not be able to enjoy God in His fullness, you will also be wasting your time and life. See, if your heart is not all-out for Him, at some point, the truth of where it belongs will be made known. That explains why certain individuals are no longer with the church of God today. But some of them used to be thought of by others as true Christians. And that was because they used Christian vocabularies like others, regularly attended church meetings and perhaps also served in one leadership capacity or the other. But their hearts were never fully with God; they were always somewhere else. So, at some point, there came circumstances that revealed to everyone the truth about what they were after.
Now if you don’t want to end up being like such individuals, you must guard your heart against taking God lightly in any way or trying to relate to Him in deception. And my prayer is that your life will be kept from being polluted or led astray in any way.
Do have a great week.
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