Loving God With All

Many today suppose that a periodic acknowledgment of God or a half-hearted recognition of Christ should be sufficient to avoid any concerns come Judgment Day. “As long as I am not an atheist or a murderer and I believe in the Man upstairs,” they presume, “then I should be okay.”

Perhaps we are partly to blame for such a widespread misunderstanding regarding the normative mindset of people who are forgiven. We too often acquiesce to our critics, tacitly agreeing that people with a zeal for God are “zealots” who would do well to tone it down. But Christ, when asked for the most important directive in all of Scripture, answered, “You shall love the Lord your God will all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind” (Matthew 22:37).

This is hardly a moderate attitude. It is high time for God’s redeemed people to remind themselves and everyone else that being sold-out for Christ and deeply in love with God is not “super-spiritual” or extracurricular. Being obsessed with God and resolute to serve Christ is normative and expected. May the world clearly see in us that there is no “happy medium” or halfway. God expects all his kids to be all-in.