He said to him, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the greatest and most important command.    Matthew 22:37 HCSB

We can donate a part of our liver to someone, and the two parts will grow to full size in about three months. But we can’t donate part of our heart. We either have to donate all or none of the heart. Some of us say we give our heart to God, but we are only willing to give a part of it and that doesn’t work.

We can’t love God half-heartedly.  The Bible tells us in numerous verses that we will find the Lord if we seek Him with our whole heart. The following verses talk about seeking the Lord; Deuteronomy 4:29, Jeremiah 29:13, 1 Chronicles 28:9, 1 Chronicles 16:11, 2 Chronicles 15:2, 2 Chronicles 7:14, Psalm 34:3. That is just a few. Now if you read any of the above-mentioned verses, not one of them commands us to half-heartedly seek the Lord.

Think about it this way, say you needed a heart transplant. What if the doctor came in and said that he was unable to find a whole heart, but he had found half a heart? What good would that do you? You need a whole heart.

Well, God needs our whole heart. Maybe you are sitting here thinking you are giving the Lord all your heart. Or maybe you are wondering what giving your whole heart means. There are a few questions you can ask yourself to determine if you are giving the Lord all your heart. Do you awaken seeking Him? Just the other day, I had a bad day. I thought back to the beginning of the day and realized I had failed to pray. I usually pray first thing, but I woke up with my mind on all these things I had to do, and I failed to pray. I hadn’t sought the Lord with my whole heart that day and things weren’t going so well. Go figure. Do you focus on Him continually? Now here is where many of you say that you have a job or kids or whatever to do during the day and can’t focus on God continually. I get what you are saying. But is God first in your life? Do you give him the first and the best of your day? When you are troubled do you turn to Him, or do you curse the day? Do you give your cares to Him? When we focus on God, we are doing ourselves a favor. We are able to give it all over to Him. Why would we not want to do that?

I spent many years of my life giving God a small portion of my heart. That little bit of my heart was no good to God. It did me no better than if He had only given me a portion of my heart. He gave us life. He gave us the hearts in our bodies. Our pastor often says that if God forgot about us for even one minute we would die. Yet we so often forget about Him.

I see people who have lots of time to spend on social media, grumbling about life, or striving to do things their way. I feel sad for them because I remember those days. For many years, I just didn’t get it. But thank God, He helped me to see the error in my ways. He showed me that He had a better plan if I would only be willing to wholeheartedly surrender to Him.

God wants it all. In Revelation 3:15-16, Jesus told the church of Laodicea that because they were lukewarm, He would spit them out. 2 Timothy 3:5 warns us to have nothing to do with people that appear godly but deny His power.

My friend if you are giving God half your heart don’t bother. Just walk away. I know this sounds harsh, but it’s doing you no good. God wants all your heart. He wants you to focus on Him and put Him first. If you are unwilling to do that, you are wasting your time. If you sit on a church pew every Sunday, but don’t seek the Lord with all your heart and love the Lord with all your heart, you may as well be elsewhere lost in sin. In Matthew 7:21, Jesus tells us that many who believe they are doing good enough will not enter heaven, but only those who do the will of His Father in heaven.

Surrender your whole heart to God. Half a heart does neither you nor Him any good.

Have a great day!