Your Whole Heart
Your Whole Heart
(#177 from Suffer Well Devotional Series©)
www.sufferwell.org
Tell Me My child, what do you think I intend when I tell you to seek Me with your “whole” heart? Do I merely mean to seek Me with your might? Seeking Me with only your own strength will invite problems. Have I not told you, “Not by might nor by power, but only by My Spirit?” (Zechariah 4:6) Seek with the power that comes from My Spirit.
The seeking part is that which will draw you closer. The whole heart (mind or center of intellect) is the circumcised heart that, while seeking, confesses that My commands are not too mysterious or difficult (Deuteronomy 30:6, 11). Can you be bitter and seek with a whole heart? Can you be greedy and seek with a whole heart? Can you never read My words and still seek with a whole heart? Can you lack faith and still seek with a whole heart?
The wholeness comes through correct application of what My Word teaches, especially the pattern of My Words. Have I not told you to “Consider correctly how you listen? Therefore, take heed how you hear: for whoever possesses, to him more shall be given…?” (Luke 8:18) The wholeness comes only with obedience. You must apply all parameters of My word in order for your heart to be whole in the first place. Seek Me as I wish to be sought. Seek without anxiousness, fear, timidity, and with no shrinking back (Hebrews 11:6).
I am not asking for immediate perfection, but rather, commanding that while you seek Me, you do so in a whole and reverent manner. Come in humility, a willingness to learn of My love, and with an expectation to receive what My will has caused you to ask for. Come with a whole mind that sees Me as I Am, and not per personal preference of who you might “like Me to be.” Yes, I Am Abba Father and you will only love Me because I have first loved you (1 John 4:19). Remember this; you can only love Me because I have allowed you to do so. This is the humble part of seeking Me in a wholesome way. “I can only love You because, by Your love, You give me permission to love!” This is a perfectly correct mindset child, and in this you will meet Me, and thus, find yourself.