Commit your way to the Lord; trust in Him and He will act.  Psalm 37:5 HCSB

Commit your activities to the Lord, and your plans will be achieved.  Proverbs 16:3 HCSB

My friend’s daughter befriended a foreign exchange student from Amsterdam.  One of the things that amazed this young woman while she was here in the U. S., is how we waste food.  She was amazed by the huge portions that are served in restaurants and how much food people left on their plates to be thrown away.  In most cases when we go to a restaurant, we could eat half of what they give us and in some cases a fourth of the portion on the plate would be plenty.  If your family member won ten million dollars in the lottery and gave you half, I would hope that you would think that was enough.  But there are things in life where half will never be enough.

Half a pair of shoes is not enough.  Half a shirt or half a pair of pants won’t work either.  No one wants to receive only half of their pay, right?  But we are perfectly content to give God way less than half.  When it comes to tithing, God only asks for one tenth of our income (Malachi 3:10).  He also promises that if we provide him with one tenth that he will open the floodgates of heaven and pour out a blessing beyond measure.  When it comes to tithing, I can assure you that God keeps His promise. But what about our time? In a 16 hour day, how much time do you give to God?  There is no where in the Bible that tells us how much time we are to give to God, but let’s just say that we were to give Him a tenth.  Do you give God a tenth of your time.  In a 16 hour day, that would be one hour and six minutes.  Now there are some of you that choked when I said to give him one tenth of your income, and some of you probably shook your head thinking I was insane when I said one tenth of your time.  Time is precious, right?  We seem to have so little of it.  But if we carve our 15 minutes of our day for bible reading and prayer, we have a good start.  It we pray throughout the day about whatever we are facing at any given moment, then we are following the instruction in the bible that tells us to pray without ceasing (1 Thessalonians 5:17).  In doing so, we are keeping a constant, open line of communication.  So even while we may not be constantly focused on a devotional our focus is on God which is right where it should be.

I have learned that when I give God the first of my time, which for me is early morning, that he blesses the rest of my day and makes my way clear.  Yesterday is a prime example. My mom has an upcoming doctor’s appointment.  The doctor wants blood tests before each appointment.  My mom likes to sleep late and the clinic where we go for the test tends to get busier as it gets later in the day.  Yesterday I gave God the first portion of my morning.  I had a number of tasks to do.  My mom woke up, we were able to get her to the clinic around 11am.  Amazingly enough, there was no one ahead of us.  We just sailed through there in a matter of minutes.  I was able to complete all my chores in the time I had hoped. I lived out our second scripture passage.

I want you to ask yourself a question today.  What if God gave us half of his attention?  What if Jesus had only gone half way to the cross and stopped?  Where would we be?  Scripture tells us that Jesus begged God to not have to go through with the crucifixion (Mark 14:35-36) but He submitted one hundred percent to God’s will.

So, what about you?  Have you surrendered to God one hundred percent?  God doesn’t ask for all of your money or all of your time.  He doesn’t even ask for half.  But, He does ask that you surrender your all to Him.  He does command us to love Hiim with all we have.  He does command us to love others as we love ourselves and let face it, we really love ourselves.  This is what makes it so hard to surrender.  But I want you to think about this, you are either going to surrender to sin or surrender to God.  So which will it be?

Would you want to marry someone that told you they could only commit half way?  I think not. God doesn’t want our half hearted commitment either (Revelation 3:15-16).

If your ways don’t seem straight and you seem to be going around in circles, know that this is not what God intended for you (Jeremiah 29:11).  Why not try surrendering your all to God?  Why not give Him your whole heart?  Half of your heart will never be enough.  He gave us all of Him, even giving His son to die on the cross for our sin (John 3:16).  With God giving his all to us, will have ever be enough?  I don’t think so.

Have a great day!