Jeremiah 29:12-13
Oct 5, 2008
Jeremiah 29:12-13 says, “Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.”
On Friday night we discussed what it might mean to seek God with our whole heart. We shared many things we have done with a half a heart or a quarter of a heart. Things like diet, homework, learning to plan the piano and exercise. We also talked about what these same activities looked like when we did them with our whole heart.
We discussed how it is possible to go to church faithfully, be part of several Bible Studies and prayer meetings and never really seek God with our whole heart. We discussed how going to Bible School and entering into the ministry is no guarantee that you are seeking God with your whole heart.
We all agreed that it is possible to start any activity with a whole heart but it is really hard to maintain it over a long period of time. I recall the Revelation 2:4-5 “Yet I hold this against you: you have forsaken your first love. Remember the height from which you have fallen. Repent and do the things you did at first.”
It is hard (maybe impossible) to keep our whole heart in anything; marriage, school work or our pursuit of God. Perhaps the best we can ever do is realize when we have become half hearted and repent before we go too far afield.
It is also true that the environment you are in can make giving your heart easier or harder. When I am with (or leading) a congregation that wants to know God it is easier to give my whole heart to it than when I am feeling alone. Baumholder seems to be a very hard place right now. With soldiers deployed, memorial services almost every week and dissention among our spiritual leaders Baumholder is really a hard spiritual environment. But all of us who were together Friday night made a commitment to pursue God with our whole heart and to repent of our half hearted attempts to find God.
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