All. <between Easter and Ephesians>

All.

Hi.

Jesus said the greatest command was to ‘love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’  He did not say ‘love God with this little leftover portion of yourself that you have allotted to God, or ‘spirituality’, as folks like to say now.  Let’s ‘examine and test ourselves and see whether we are in the faith,’ 2 Corinthians 13.5. “Examine yourselves to see if your faith is genuine. Test yourselves. Surely you know that Jesus Christ is among you; if not, you have failed the test of genuine faith.”

>What do we spend most of our waking hours thinking about?

>On what do we spend our money?

>How and where do we serve God and others?

“I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot.  I wish you were either one or the other!  So, because you are lukewarm—neither hot nor cold—I am about to spit you out of my mouth.” Yikes. Revelation 3.15   God is going to ‘spit’ us out of his mouth?  The word ‘spit’ in Greek here connotes gag, hurl, and retch; now reread that sentence.¹   If we obey the greatest commandment to ‘love the Lord our God with all our heart, with all our soul, with all our mind, and with all our strength’, how could our lives possibly reflect a lukewarm Christianity?  They couldn’t, of course.  

‘Fact is, if many of us were honest, we think a little like this guy: “I would like to buy $3 worth of God, please, not enough to explode my soul or disturb my sleep, but just enough to equal a cup of warm milk or a snooze in the sunshine.  I don’t want enough of him to make me love a black man or pick beets with a migrant.  I want ecstasy, not transformation; I want the warmth of the womb, not a new birth.  I want a pound of the eternal in a paper sack.  I would like to buy $3 worth of God, please.”²

‘Many of us believe we have as much of God as we want right now, a reasonable portion of God among all the other things in our lives.’  Most of our thoughts revolve around other things in our workaday worlds, right?  But the fact is, all of this will pass away, yet our souls will remain, so

nothing should consume us more than our relationship with God.

 ‘God is not someone who can be tacked on to our lives.’  And after all, it is about eternity, and nothing compares with that, my friends.

Let us take the celebration of our risen Lord into each new day… after all, our God is alive! I challenge you to give yourselves wholly over to God.  Simply tell him,

“God, I let so many things crowd you out—I get lost in the details of my schedule and demands . . . I would like to know you more, and I would like to know how to love you more.  Could you show me?  On this day, I, ____your name___________, surrender my life to you.  I want to live for you, so show me how to be a fully devoted follower.  Amen”

[An aside: At this point, I got up from writing, to pour myself a cup of Italian Roast coffee and took a moment to look out my back window … I love looking at all of the birds that come to dine and be with each other, all at my birdfeeders.  I noted their different colors and happy sounds—two orioles were even drinking the hummingbirds’ nectar…. And then I thought, ‘Thank you, Lord of all Creation, for your handiwork!  Thank you for the birds, and the trees and flowers and the beautiful sky above them.  I praise you and thank you, God, for all you have created; you are amazing, Lord.’            Moments later, I came back to my computer and realized God had answered my prayer . . . I praised God for Nature, praised God for who he is and what he does—and realized that’s part of giving ALL of me to him throughout the day.  ‘Every blessing you pour out, I turn back to praise…’ the song goes….]

Part of giving ‘all’ … well, it starts with a constant awareness.  

Christine

PastorWoman.com

1 - p.84, Francis Chan, Crazy Love 

2 – Wilbur Rees, “$3 Worth of God”, quoted by Tim Hansel, in When I Relax, I Feel Guilty