(Note: This post was originally written as a devotional column for my local newspaper)
As part of my research into the
history of the Second Baptist Church, I’ve been reading some of the books
written by former members and pastors. One of them, Rev. Walter Cook (who went
on to serve as a professor at Bangor Theological Seminary for many years),
wrote a book of devotions for young people, in which he challenged them to live
lives that are wholeheartedly committed to God.
Too often we respond to God’s grace
with half-hearted measures, wavering back and forth in our commitment to follow
his ways. Now, while it’s true that our salvation rests on God’s grace alone,
and not on how perfectly we are able to walk the path of Christian
discipleship, it’s also true that we do ourselves a grave disservice by not
pursuing a wholehearted, all-out commitment to the ways of love and truth
revealed in the Scriptures.
Rev. Cook put it this way: “Many of
us try to keep God himself at a distance. We would prefer not to know too much
about his will for our lives, because he might command us to do things for him
and our acquaintances that we are unwilling to do. God does not want us to be
‘reasonably’ generous with others, ‘moderately’ kind, ‘relatively’ thoughtful,
‘mildly’ considerate. He calls us to be more than half decent, requiring us to
love him and our neighbors with all our heart and soul and mind and strength.”
We tend to avoid God’s call to
all-out commitment because it seems hard. We think that we’ll have to lay aside
some of our old comforts in order to live the kind of life he’s calling us to
live. But what we ignore when we choose to follow him in half-measures is that
the life he’s offering us is more than simply difficult: it is wonderful. In
the words of the apostle James, it is “the perfect law that gives freedom”
(James 1:25). Rather than restricting our freedom, God’s way actually opens us
up to a whole new world of living that we never could have known before. To
live all-out for God is to live life to its absolute fullest. When we are
loving God and loving others with every fiber of our being, only then do we
begin to taste the beautiful, unhindered life of deep-running joy that he
offers to each one of us. All we have to do is yes to him, and begin the
journey of living like a true believer.