July 24

“…and went not fully after the LORD, as did David his father.” 1 Kings 11:6

Solomon weakened his stand for God as he aged. The verse says he did evil in the sight of the Lord, and his evil was idolatry. He had held a privileged position with God and had been blessed with great advantages by Yahwah, but unlike his father David, Solomon added to the worship of Yahwah, his allegiance and adoration of pagan idols. In this sense then, the scriptures say that he did not go ‘fully after the Lord’! Full-hearted desire and service for the Lord, is still a measure of the quality we offer the Almighty God. The mandate of scripture is that we should love the Lord with all our heart, soul and strength. If our love for Him is wholehearted, then our service to Him will reflect that same fullness. There seems to exist a trend among many Christians today, which reflects more the ways of Solomon, than the ways of his father David. I refer to the half-heartedness, partial devotion and splintered love, which so many professing believers offer to God, while at the same time holding onto a passionate, intense and consuming desire for many things of the world. This, the Bible calls enmity against God, spiritual adultery and faithlessness! We must judge and weigh out the condition of our hearts towards the Lord. Is an ardent, deep and fervent love for God held firmly in our hearts, grasped so steadfastly that it cannot be easily dislodged? Does it surpass the affection we have for anyone and everything else? Is it fully devoted to Him as our only God, or shared with things and interests we hold so dear that they have become idols in our lives? The lukewarm heart condition of the Laodecian church of Revelation, or the condition of having lost our first love as the Ephesian Church was charged, are not the state our hearts should be found in at the coming of Jesus! The summation of our lives should read more like the résumé which God gave to King David, a shining testimony of a person who while perhaps not perfect, yet followed after the Lord with all his heart! Such excellence of love and wholeheartedness is our reasonable service to God and appropriate response to His love for us!

http://www.pentecostalfamilychurch.com.au/devotion

Jan 4

“…Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.” Matthew 22:37

There is ‘wholeness’ in the command by which Jesus summarised the early portion of the Decalogue, in this passage. The love we owe the Lord, is a wholehearted, whole-soul and whole-mind kind of love. Yielding only part of ourselves is not sufficient in achieving the correct and close nature of the relationship He desires with us. Contenting ourselves with half-hearted commitment to God, thinking that a ‘little’ of God in our lives is enough, and assuming that the Lord is pleased with such whole-less-ness, is a sorely mistaken notion and a largely misplaced effort. Nothing short of a complete yielding of ourselves in love and the willing effort to achieve this state throughout life, is pleasing to the Omnipotent God we serve, or worthy of Him. The command appears to be a high calling and it is, but it can only be that way, for to have anything of anyone in higher regard, love or esteem in our lives than the Lord whom we call our God and claim to worship, is to have entered into our own form of idolatry and spiritual adultery! Some actually justify their reticence to love God as He commands, for fear of becoming or being seen as ‘fanatical’! Sadly the same individuals often display a greater ‘fanaticism’ for many material aspects of life and do not find this misplaced affection a concern or a bother! There is also the tendency to mistake the object of our love and as a result to love Christianity more so than Christ and humanity more than the human individual. Loving God as He commands, is a far cry from empty headed and imbalanced fanaticism or merely generalised and religious affection. Committed love for God is godly, holy, balanced, humble, wise and kind. It portrays the principles of the faith firmly and lovingly and does not ‘lord it’ over others. In context it would be better for believers to fear far more, being too much in love with the world and the things of it, than too much in love with Jesus! It is our duty, privilege and joy then, to have the highest quality of love for God and hold it as supreme,  above all care and regard for all else in life. In the fulfilment of this command to love God with all the desire of our heart, all the passion of our soul and all the strength of our intellect, we will find the greatest contentment and personal fulfilment and the wisdom and power to carry out the other portion of God’s law – to love others as we love ourselves.


http://www.pentecostalfamilychurch.com.au/devotion