In God’s providence, each of us is confronted each day with facts that ought to move us. The whole issue of spiritual growth hangs in the balance as we make the daily decisions that determine our responsiveness, the sensitivity of our hearts.
God gave us hearts with several dimensions, and we were designed to seek Him in all of these. To some extent, is this not wholeheartedness? To give God less than all three — our intellect, emotions, and will — is to be less than a whole person.
Hunger is not always a bad thing. There is an old saying that “hunger is the best sauce.” Perhaps our hunger needs to grow more intense before we can properly appreciate the feast. If so, God may withhold the feast until we are ready.
Trifling is undesirable even in worldly matters. Those who dabble, acting superficially and without any serious intent, rarely accomplish any lasting good. But the worst trifling is to trifle with God. That is not only undesirable; it is deadly.
Godly love can only be possible when we grow in our appreciation of the goodness of God’s holy character. As long as our delight depends upon His conforming Himself to our wishes, that delight will be small. We must learn to love the truth about God.
With Paul, we need to be able to say, “For this reason I also suffer these things; nevertheless I am not ashamed, for I know whom I have believed and am persuaded that He is able to keep what I have committed to Him until that Day” (2 Timothy 1:12).
Somehow we sense that God will require changes in our character so radical that we find it safer to stay where we are in the lowlands, far from the adventure of real life with God. Confronted by disturbing, unpredictable truths, we retreat.
Teilhard de Chardin wrote, “All of us, Lord, from the moment we are born feel within us this disturbing mixture of remoteness and nearness.” Although we’re cut off from God, He is still not very far away. God is near us, waiting to be found.
To live life at its best, we must learn to combine three things: what is good, what is right, and what is true. Learning to recognize these things is no small challenge, and learning to balance them harmoniously is an even greater challenge!
God is to be our only real “possession.” All other things must be loved with a love we can let go of, and if our attachment to anything other than God is so strong that we can’t let go of it, then that thing, whatever it is, has become an idol to us.
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