Loving God Wholeheartedly

First, it’s good to be back blogging on the Scriptures as we continue our journey through the Bible this year. We have been away these past couple of weeks ministering at Camp St. Christopher and simply had so much to do that there was no time to write.  We had a tremendous time as we saw many young people respond to God and offer their lives to him in love and surrender.  Thanks for your prayers!

Our return lands us knee-deep in the book of Jeremiah. Few people have ever had as difficult a call from God as Jeremiah did.  His was to call God’s people to repent and return to the Lord. When they continually refused, his call was to announce destruction and exile upon the nation. No one likes a nay-sayer.  Because of this Jeremiah was not popular.  Not with the priests, other “prophets”, the government officials, nor the king – no one escaped the Lord’s critique through Jeremiah’s prophecies. It must have been incredibly difficult for Jeremiah to continually bear bad news and to be ignored! He endured sorrow and heartbreak because of the people’s apathy toward God and their scorn and indifference toward his ministry.

God’s people had become rebellious, self centered and complacent. They believed that their identity as the chosen people of God meant they could behave carte-blanche. They believed that the prosperity they enjoyed because of their covenant relationship with God was actually something they had achieved by their own ingenuity and resourcefulness.  They didn’t see or believe how their behavior turned them away from God.  They couldn’t believe God would punish them, despite how they behaved.  They refused to listen to God’s warnings through Jeremiah. And while they continued to practice “religion” in an external way (what we would call going through the motions of faith), they had no real connection with the Living God. In short, they had the trappings of faith without actually believing and living by faith. The arrogance of their hearts was tremendous. They wanted God’s blessings but did not want God. They wanted the benefits of relationship with God, yet refused to live in accordance with the nature of God and in conformity to the ways of God.  Compounding their problem was that they had plenty of religious leaders telling them God was pleased with them; that no harm would befall them; and that peace and prosperity would remain.  But this was not God’s assessment.  God was not pleased.

In this, there is a warning for us.  We must see that there is the potential within every one of us to take the grace of God and make it an excuse for license.  We can take the wonder of God’s grace and make it an idol that hides and approves of the sin our own hearts. I don’t think this happens right away in anyone’s life. It creeps in gradually.  We begin well by rightly understanding there is nothing we can do to earn God’s favor.  There is nothing that we can do on our own to  be righteous. Salvation is the gift of God through faith in Jesus Christ. And so we turn to God in faith by trusting that his grace alone will save us.  But unless we allow God to thoroughly restore our hearts and lives, unless we repent deeply and walk intimately with him each day, the sin that is so prevalent within us can easily cause us to take advantage of his good will toward us.  Soon, we like the Israelites, can begin to subtly expect God’s grace regardless of the sin in  our hearts. Perhaps we even begin to believe that because of his grace we need not live lives that are being reformed daily by his Spirit. On the one hand, it is right to rest in him knowing that we cannot achieve anything on our own. Yet on the other hand, we need to cling to him and be responsive to his ways and promptings. The key to living in this tension is staying in relationship to God.  It is key that in response to the revelation God has given us, we learn to love him wholeheartedly. We learn to yield to his promptings. We learn to walk in his ways. Otherwise, we may be in danger of enjoying the blessings of being his people while simultaneously forgetting to remain in relationship with him.  Do we love God for what he does for us and what he gives us? Or do we simply love God for who he is and all he has already done for us?

I pray that we will be like the good figs of Jeremiah 24.  God says of these people, “I will give them a heart to know that I am the LORD, and they shall be my people and I will be their God, for they shall return to me with their whole hearts,” (Jeremiah 24:7).