God Doesn’t Demand Good Intentions and Left-overs, He Demands The Whole Heart

I think many of us are well-intended when it comes to God. We want to follow Him, we intend to follow Him, but what we want and intend to do often differ from what we deliver on. Throughout the Old Testament, the people of God, after straying from Him, return to Him and say “We won’t do that again!” and then somehow end up doing something worse than before. They traded the Living God who they could not see for idols they carved with their hands. It’s easy to look at them and say “I wouldn’t do that!” And yet, don’t we do the same? We intend to follow and serve God, but then a pipe bursts. We intend to follow God and a family crisis occurs. We intend to follow God, but the demands of work are astronomical.

Loved ones, God knows we are weak, and that we intend to do many things we don’t, but He does not accept excuses! In a world of half-hearted (or less) promises, God demands our whole heart! In the ten commandments, He states, first off: “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me” (Exodus 20:2-3). Again, to Israel, He declares “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might” (Deuteronomy 6:4-5).  To Israel, he again states “Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine” (Isaiah 43:1). Some will say “That was to Israel, what does this have to do with us?” Consider this statement by Jesus: “If you love me, you will keep my commandments”-John 14:15

God unashamedly states to Israel that He is a Jealous God who will not share them with anyone else. In the age of Grace, we should also understand that God is the same today as He was yesterday as He will be forever more. Part of the reason our faith seems weak is that we do not put our hope in Jesus. We look to what we can see, and chase after bills, relationships, jobs, and pleasure. Though we don’t carve idols, we sure seem to collect a lot of them! The good news is that God doesn’t merely demand our whole hearts, He also promises to meet our needs (not our wants, mind you, but our needs). All we need to do is seek Him and His Kingdom and His righteousness above all else.

Matthew 6:19-34

“Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

“The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light, but if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!

“No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money”

“Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?  Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.

“Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.