Wholehearted Commitment

“Wholehearted Commitment”

By Zach Wood

Deuteronomy 6:5-7 NLT

And you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your strength.  And you must commit yourselves wholeheartedly to these commands that I am giving you today.  Repeat them again and again to your children. Talk about them when you are at home and when you are on the road, when you are going to bed and when you are getting up.

It seems we live in a culture where commitment is very hard to come by.  People so often become as fickle as the weather.  It seems everywhere we turn, people are giving us promises or guarantees, only to turn around and break our hearts moments later.  It saddens me how little commitment people have these days toward things.  People don’t want to commit to many things because of the hard effort involved when things get tough.  People seem to want the convenience of walking away from any commitments when times get tough.

Now, before we start nodding our head in complete agreement about all of those people, here is the harsh reality.  Christians are often the worst at keeping commitments.  We talk a good talk, but so often we fail at matching that talk with a life of commitment.  This is a tough pill to swallow, but it is a reality.  And, I will admit that I have been terrible at keeping commitments in my life.  Not all of them, but many. There are so many times I fail at keeping my commitments to friends and family.  I say that I will do something and then I turn around and break that commitment because life gets tough and I use excuses. 

We not only break commitments to others, but we also break our commitments to God as well.  Why are we so flippant when it comes to committing to things in life?  What we often do is plead with God to do more in our lives, but then we don’t even give ourselves wholeheartedly to Him.  It is like we expect Him to move mountains in our lives, but then we don’t want to hold up our commitments to Him because life gets tough.

I want to live my life better.  I want to live with wholehearted commitment to Him.  I don’t want my devotion to Him to be fickle.  I desire to serve Him and give my best.  I really want to live for and serve God, but I get so distracted by my selfish desires and I fail miserably. 

Instead of looking at others around me in this world and shaking my head in disappointment because of the lack of commitment, I need to look at my own life and see where I am failing and how much I need to improve my commitment.

Do we have wholehearted commitment to God?