Wholly Follow...

Have you ever wondered what it really means to "wholly" follow the Lord? I mean with everything that is within us; we follow Jesus. That is something I do believe we speak of not and fear much. What will that bring to our lives? What kinds of inevitable change will that call me to? What will happen to my life, my rep, my comfort, my safety? Oh, how different our lives would look if we directed our sole attention to wholly following Jesus in our lives. Instead of pondering and puruing our life's best, what if we pursued Christ's best? What if our goal was to make known the riches of God, and not make known our own artifitial worth?
In Joshua chapter 14 we see the division of the promised land. 40 years earlier (Numbers 13) we remember that Caleb along with others scouted out the promised land and in spite of so much negativity and discouragement to inherit the land due to "giants" that the nation could never conquer; Caleb insisted they go at once to occupy that land and overcome it. The Scripture then says three times in Joshua 14 that Caleb "wholly followed the Lord His God." Because Caleb wholly followed the Lord, he inherited the land of Hebron as his own. Caleb followed God when his comrads would not. Caleb followed the Lord in the sea of giants. What does it means to "wholly follow" the Lord?
God wants our very best. He never accepts our leftovers, or our scraps. He is not interested in our obedience on our terms (which is really no obedience at all), He wants all or nothing! How different would our lives be if we wholly followed Christ no matter the cost, no matter the commitment, no matter the outcome? Is Christ worth it or not?

The Small Task of God

It is a small thing for God to help us in our big things! Wow. Interesting. Have we ever thought of such a thing. I often have thought of God helping me as something where I must plead with Him for a nugget or crumb, hoping that in His infinite grace and power He might bestow a blessed help on me. I have never really thought that perhaps that is the smallest thing He does. Oswald Chambers says as the person of God that, “thou art nothing but a tiny insect at the door of my all-sufficiency. ‘I will help thee.’” Now, while I don’t really like thinking of myself as just an ant in the door of God, I do believe that is true. In comparison to God’s great presence, power and perfection I am just the smallest of insects who slink across the ground. But what makes God amazing is that while we step on ants and shew them away (or burn them with a magnifying glass), God comes way down to our level and helps us, and loves us, and spends time with us. Truly we serve a mysterious God. I often think, why oh why, would God spend any time on me; a dirty, messed up, spec. The answer? You decide.