Whole Heart

 DEVOTION

THE LETTER TO THE ROMANS

WHOLE HEART

Rom 1:8-10

8 First, I thank my God through Jesus Christ for all of you, because your faith is being reported all over the world. 9 God, whom I serve with my whole heart in preaching the gospel of his Son, is my witness how constantly I remember you 10 in my prayers at all times; and I pray that now at last by God's will the way may be opened for me to come to you.

NIV

We are still stuck in this introduction because there are several more points that we are to consider. After pondering the idea of thanking God through Jesus Christ and thanking him for all the other believers. Then we considered that point about their faith being known all over the world, and how that relates to whether our faith is known at all by anyone. We now must look at those words of Paul when he said that it is God whom he serves with his whole heart in preaching the gospel of his Son. We need to reexamine our hearts and see if we are serving God with the whole of it. What that means is it is not appropriate to have a divided heart. But what does that mean? Indeed, we must spend time and be concerned about our normal daily lives. Even Paul took time to work as a tent maker, in fact, for a while he was in partnership with Priscilla and Aquila, as we saw in the record of the Acts of the Apostles. Therefore, having to live our daily lives, working, shopping for groceries, and clothes, paying bills, caring for the things around the house, cleaning, cooking, mowing lawns, etc. we simply do not have time to serve God every moment of the day, unless all that we do, we do in the name of the Lord. We are supposed to work in our jobs as onto the Lord, so then could not all that we do be about doing it as onto the Lord? Sometimes that gets a little vague in the sense that we might watch a program on the TV, or a sports game, golf, football, basketball, etc. Can that be done in the name of the Lord? Then what about when we fail, we fall short somehow and do something that would be a sin? How do we serve our Lord God with our whole hearts? Perhaps the key is in preaching the gospel of his Son. After all, we cannot preach have-hearted for that would be a travesty. We also cannot preach the gospel with a divided heart. Again, what does that divided heart look like? Jesus said that we cannot serve two masters, and it is in the direct context of either serving God or serving money, which he was dealing with the idea of storing up money on earth for our own future pleasures, or storing up things in heaven, for our eternal future pleasures. If we are trying to do both, then perhaps our hearts might be just slightly divided.  Do we dare say that anything we put our trust in on this earth could be somewhat of an idol? We must set aside our whole hearts just for Jesus. We have been told if there is anything true, noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable, excellent, and praiseworthy, think about such things. When we ponder all those adjectives, we can see the only one described is Jesus. There is nothing or nobody who fits any of those descriptions. Nothing or no one other than Jesus is true, pure, noble, lovely, admirable, excellent, and praiseworthy. Therefore, as we are always walking in his light, and always have him on our minds and heart in whatever we are doing, then we might be able to say that we serve him with our whole hearts.