Numbers 32:11-12 (NIV)
11 ‘Because they have not followed me wholeheartedly, not one of the men twenty years old or more who came up out of Egypt will see the land I promised on oath to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob— 12 not one except Caleb son of Jephunneh the Kenizzite and Joshua son of Nun, for they followed the LORD wholeheartedly.’
There are so many things that jumped out at me in today’s reading, yet I couldn’t get past these verses. They are yelling to an American church and to Hope Chapel OC and to me personally. They stand as a reminder of who will possess all of what God has meant for them. Saying that, it should be obvious that there will be people who don’t get half of what God has already apportioned them.
It is the heart that God is most concerned about. Out of the heart everything flows, evil and good, speech and every action. Our heart is where the “real” us is housed. Not in what we “believe” (which many times has no faith attached to it – it is merely intellectual knowledge). Proverbs tells us to guard our heart for out of it come the issues of life (or well springs of life). Here is an astounding fact, I have a new heart! When I gave “my heart” to Christ, the one that is desperately wicked, who could know it, he gave me a new heart from the Spirit of God. It allows me to choose to be full hearted toward God with relative ease compared to the hearts of the Israelites in this day. Thank God for that heart!
Here is a secret; you can’t be wholehearted for God if you are only doing it to possess all the many blessings that God has already decided you should have. We all have to decide to be full-hearted for God because we consider Him worthy to give our all, our best, our everything to. The benefit of being all in for God – whatever He has decided to give us, is ours to possess!
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I love this! "He gave us a new heart." That is something you really have to dwell on because it is so easily taken for granted.
ReplyDeleteThe other verse that really moved me today was 2 Corinthians 1:21 -
"Now it is God who makes both us and you stand firm in Christ. He anointed us, set his seal of ownership on us, and put his spirit in our hearts as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come."
What an honor to wear God's ID tag! He placed a seal on us, accepts us for who we are, loves us unconditionally and is not ashamed of us for any past mistakes or bad decisions we've made. He just loves us. "Just" is a good word here because he makes it look so easy to love and accept us. (If only we could do that for those we love or better yet, those we don't necessarily love but tolerate in this life.)
The other part of this verse I like is "he puts his spirit in our hearts as a deposit guaranteeing what is to come." We can get through the tough stuff in this life because he provides our comfort, our peace, and determines our steps (if we allow him to) and if that isn't enough, we get this reminder that this isn't even going to be as good as it gets. No, we have a guarantee of things to come! I can't even imagine and to be honest it makes me a little nervous because I still struggle with whether I'm good enough to receive it. Isn't it funny that all through scripture we read that we don't have to be good enough, we just (there's that word again) have to love God first and love others and he will accept us and love us unconditionally for eternity, and yet, we can still struggle with how simple this is? We JUST have to love Him, surrender our lives to Him and follow Him! Done! In return we receive a new heart, a seal of His ownership on us, and this amazing guarantee of things to come.