Following God Wholeheartedly
“So on that day, Moses swore to me, ‘The land on which your feet have walked will be your inheritance and that of your children forever because you have followed the LORD my God wholeheartedly.’” – Joshua 14:9
Nathaniel Hawthorne has a strange tale called “Earth’s Holocaust.” The story is about a time when the inhabitants of the earth were overburdened with an accumulation of worn-out foolish things, determined to rid themselves of it by a general bonfire. All night long a stranger with a cynical smile and haughty air stood watching them bring things that they considered evil, pornographic books, implements of war, liquor, tobacco, drugs, and whatnot. All were tossed into the fire. Late in the night, the stranger approached and said,
“There is one thing that these wiseacres have forgotten to throw into the fire, and without which all the rest of the conflagration is just nothing at all; yes, though they had burned the earth itself to a cinder.”
“And what may that be?” eagerly demanded the last murderer.
“What but the human heart itself?” said the dark-visage stranger, with a portentous grin. “And, unless they hit upon some method of purifying that foul cavern, forth from it will reissue all the shapes of wrong and misery–the same old shapes or worse ones–which they have taken such a vast deal of trouble to consume to ashes.”
Following the Lord wholeheartedly means total commitment. Today in prayer, thank Christ that He went to the Cross fully committed to you and choose to follow Him with your whole heart.
“Christ is not valued at all unless He is valued above all.” – Augustine
“But thanks be to God that, though you used to be slaves to sin, you wholeheartedly obeyed the form of teaching to which you were entrusted.” – Romans 6:17