To Encourage You

1 Samuel 7:3 “And Samuel said to all the house of Israel, ‘If you are returning to the Lord with all your heart, then put away the foreign gods and the Ashtaroth from among you and direct your heart to the Lord and serve him only, and he will deliver you out of the hand of the Philistines.’”

Christianity that is real is an “all or none” thing. That’s fundamental to the faith. It’s where true faith begins. Anything less than this and we are kidding ourselves as to the nature of our faith. Though we may call ourselves “Christians” we are something else, at least in action if not in truth. Jesus tolerates no competitors for our heart’s allegiance. If there’s someone or something else we’re seeking, even as an “add-on,” our faith isn’t real, for it’s not the kind of faith our Lord recognizes as real. It’s always been that way, even in the Old Testament in the days before Christ came.

You see, in those days believers put their trust in the one Who would come. Jesus said as much when He told the unbelieving Jews, “Your father Abraham rejoiced that he would see my day. He saw it and was glad” (John 8:56). When God promised a seed to Abraham, He promised him that “in your offspring shall all the nations of the earth be blessed”(Genesis 22:18).  Here the Father was pointing not just to Abraham’s son Isaac, but to the Son who would come from Isaac’s line that would bring salvation to the world. Then in Hebrews 11:26 we are told that Moses turned away from the riches of Egypt to be counted with the people of Israel because “He considered the reproach of Christ greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt, for he was looking to the reward.” Both Moses and Abraham worshipped the true God, the God who is the Three in One. They had no other allegiances. Their worship was an “all-in” thing.

Not so those in Israel leading up to the incident above from 1 Samuel 7. These verses follow a statement that a 20-year period had just passed when “all the house of Israel lamented after the Lord.” You see, things weren’t going so well for them. They were being oppressed by their enemies. God had warned Israel much earlier that when they reached Canaan, if they didn’t drive out all their enemies from the land, “then those of them who you let remain shall be as barbs in your eyes and thorns in your sides and they shall trouble you in the land where you dwell” (Deuteronomy 33:55). The root of such problems would be the influence these idolatrous nations would inevitably have on them. As Samuel said in the verse above, they had bowed down to the foreign Gods. In the process, they were trying to serve both these gods and the Lord, rather than to serve the Lord only. But that’s a recipe for disaster. It was so for them, and it’s the same for you and me.

Jesus put it this way in Matthew 6:24: “No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money.” In other words, if you think you’re serving two masters, and you think one of them is the true God, then you are mistaken. If there are two (or more) masters in your life or mine, then we are not serving the true God. Our true allegiance in such cases is always to the other god or gods in our life. That god might be our money. It could be our family. Maybe it’s our friends. It could be our career, our hobbies, or some other worldly pursuit. Whatever the case, if our allegiance isn’t totally to the Lord, then He isn’t our Lord. One way some have put this is that if God isn’t the Lord of all, then He isn’t the Lord at all of our life.

So, what about you? Does the Lord have all of you? Is being a follower of Jesus the thing that defines you above everything else? Or is Christ, the church, and what you believe about such things, nothing more than a part of your life – maybe a very important part, but again, just a part. If so, you may want to take stock of your life and ask yourself if you really know and follow Christ, for those who truly know Him want Him more than anything else, no matter what the cost.