ICS Daily Devotions
Love Your God with All Your Heart
Eph 5:1-2: Therefore be imitators of God as dear children. And walk in love, as Christ also has loved us and given Himself for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling aroma.
God has called us to manifest His glory on Earth and to live consecrated lives. He has granted us all His blessings and inheritance in Jesus Christ. It is for us just to receive it by faith. Unfortunately, it is not always the reality. Many Christians do not grow spiritually after salvation and remain spiritual infants. From the spiritual angle, they seem barely surviving or waiting for the Second Coming of Christ. They lose focus all the time. They are either too busy with their material things or do not really dare to step up into the unknown realm of faith. They do not bear the fruit of the Spirit and do not fulfill the mandate of being Christ’s servant and ambassador.
The Holy Spirit was sent to us by Jesus to reveal the will of the Father and to be our helper. He is a crucial person of the Trinity for this age. But in the general Christian literature the Spirit occupies only a marginal space. Some Christians would even deny that the Spirit is a person. Christians do not want to practice a close relationship with the Spirit, they do not want to lose their comfort and safety of the old patterns. And it is not just the case with liberal Christians but also with those who are the born-again Christians. That is even more alarming. If we believe that the Holy Spirit is a person, who should have a close relationship with God if not those who experienced salvation and received the Spirit?
We are called to be the imitators of God. The word “Christians” means to be “Christ-like”. The parents like to see progress with their children. They invest in them, communicate with them, give them blessings and warnings, all with the goal to nourish and raise a mature person, full of integrity and success in life. The same can be applied to the spiritual realm. If we as Christians copy the character of our Father, the spiritual growth is guaranteed. Yet, we give up so many times and deny the spiritual progress. When Jesus walked on earth, he taught the people what it means to love their God from all of their heart, mind, and soul.
Mk 10:17-22: Now as He was going out on the road, one came running, knelt before Him, and asked Him, “Good Teacher, what shall I do that I may inherit eternal life?” So Jesus said to him, “Why do you call Me good? No one is good but One, that is, God. You know the commandments: Do not commit adultery,’ ‘Do not murder,’ ‘Do not steal,’ ‘Do not bear false witness,’ ‘Do not defraud,’ ‘Honor your father and your mother.’ ” And he answered and said to Him, “Teacher, all these things I have kept from my youth.” Then Jesus, looking at him, loved him, and said to him, “One thing you lack: Go your way, sell whatever you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, take up the cross, and follow Me.” But he was sad at this word, and went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions.
Today in the New Covenant Jesus dwells in our hearts through His Spirit. We do not need to search Him on one place. We can follow Him wherever we are and wherever we go. The problem is not the riches, the problem is the attitude towards God. The rich man exercised a mental assent faith rather than true faith. Jesus knew that something was lacking in his spiritual life. The rich man was religious, probably without any visible flaws on the outside, just as many Pharisees who were confronting Jesus. And the temptation to rely on the riches was strong. His heart was not aligned with God. Jesus commented his statement “Good teacher” because he felt false humility coming from his mouth. It was a religious phrase to him even though the factual statement was correct. It reminds a situation when student studies for an exam in haste and just learns phrases of the material without really understanding its meaning. Doing this, you can pass the test, but if you apply this on Christianity, you can never gain God’s favor this way. Jesus used his riches to teach and show him the real condition of his heart.
We cannot serve both God and mammon. Our heart’s attitude should be aligned with Jesus and His will for our lives. As the Bible says, if we focus on God and His Kingdom, we will receive abundant blessing on this earth and the eternal life in the age to come. Let us enter the divine plan that God has established for us and walk worthy of the heavenly calling!
Sermon Series: Being Imitators of Christ
