Single Minded and Wholehearted Devotion

UV 4129/10000 Single Minded and Wholehearted Devotion No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon ( money, possessions, fame, status, or whatever is valued more than the Lord). Matthew 6 v 24 We need to prioritise God over all else in life including our own life, our family, our children, our possessions, our position, our reputation, our security, our ambitions. These are to have value only in as much as it serves to help us serve and honour God better or more effectively. If we prioritise any of these over God, we provoke His “jealousy” for the word clearly says, He is a jealous God. We are created in this way so that we can serve only God as master. All the rest are our servants and also to be used to serve the Lord God. We should not set great store by it and know that these are gifts given by the Lord to enable us to fulfill our purpose in life. Job was first given all these things -status, wealth, possessions, prominence, family, security - but even when it was all taken away and was urged by others like even his wife to curse God, he faithfully refused and continued to honour the Lord. In the midst of this second wave, many men and women of God are afflicted and even men who are believers have lost their lives. Yet we who serve God wholeheartedly cannot question His sovereign will. Like Job, we need to affirm, “ The Lord has given and He has taken.” We cannot question the timing when He takes away what He has given us. We need to be single minded and whole hearted in our devotion to the Lord. We cannot be double minded, fickle hearted, divided in our dedication and devotion to Him. The first commandment of Jesus subsumes the ten commandments given through Moses- love the Lord your God with all your heart ( all your emotions), with all your mind ( with all your thoughts, goals and decisions), with all your strength ( with all your physical, intellectual, emotional, spiritual abilities and resources). Making anything else more precious to us than His word, His will, His person, His promises, His name is amounting to bowing to idols. We know we cannot gain mastery over our own lives for we do not know ourselves or our inner being that well. We know we owe everything we are and ever will be to Him. We have both life and eternal life in Him. we live and move and exist in Him and for Him.