The Battle for Our Whole Hearts

CONSECRATE Wake up, sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.  Jesus, I belong to you. I lift up my heart to you. I set my mind on you. I fix my eyes on you. I offer my body to you as a living sacrifice. Jesus, we belong to you.  Praying in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, amen.  HEAR Judges 7:1–3 (NIV) Early in the morning, Jerub-Baal (that is, Gideon) and all his men camped at the spring of Harod. The camp of Midian was north of them in the valley near the hill of Moreh. The LORD said to Gideon, “You have too many men. I cannot deliver Midian into their hands, or Israel would boast against me, ‘My own strength has saved me.’ Now announce to the army, ‘Anyone who trembles with fear may turn back and leave Mount Gilead.’” So twenty-two thousand men left, while ten thousand remained. CONSIDER Finally sufficiently confident in God’s direction and favor, Gideon blew the trumpet, put out the call for freedom fighters, and look what happened: thirty-two thousand men reported for duty. Surely Gideon must have thought to himself, Look what God did! Isn’t God amazing! Or maybe he thought, Well, that’s a good start against an army three times our size, but not nearly enough! Pay very close attention to what God says here: “You have too many men. I cannot deliver Midian into their hands, or Israel would boast against me, ‘My own strength has saved me.’” We want God and the big army. We want God and the fat endowment. We want God and the smartest, most talented people in the room. And here’s the biggest seduction of them all: we want to tell ourselves that God gave us the army and the endowment and the smartest, most talented people in the room, effectively merging the two into one. Then we find ourselves in this place of fuzzy faith where we say things like, “Look what God did,” while quietly congratulating ourselves for all our hard work that made it possible. “You have too many men. I cannot deliver Midian into their hands, or Israel would boast against me, ‘My own strength has saved me.’” Imagine God saying to you after your massive multi-year capital campaign, “You have too much money. Give two-thirds of it back.” And according to the story as it will unfold, we would only just be getting started. This is why God chooses a kid with a slingshot and no armor to take on the giant Goliath. This is why God picks a teenage girl in a nowhere town to carry his Son to term. This is why he calls a super-talented leader like Paul and teaches him all his qualifications are as worthless to God as a pile of garbage. Get a load of this: But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. God chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him. (1 Cor. 1:27–29) This is why the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. I think God would rather receive a dollar from a million poor people who couldn’t afford even that than to get a million dollars from a super-wealthy person who would never even miss it. Why? Because God doesn’t need our power or our money or our talent. He wants our hearts. That’s the encouragement today. Give him your whole heart. It’s why God’s first altar call of the morning was done in reverse: “Now announce to the army, ‘Anyone who trembles with fear may turn back and leave Mount Gilead.’ So twenty-two thousand men left, while ten thousand remained.” God is looking for our hearts, our wholehearted, all-in hearts. That’s where great awakenings begin—with the ones who tremble not in fear but in awe of him alone. PRAY Father, we want you to have our hearts. Yet we realize we need you to give us more access to our own hearts that we might grant that access back to you. Open the eyes of our hearts, Lord, to behold you, to fathom you, to be able to imagine just how good you are and loving and powerful and merciful. Come, Holy Spirit, awaken our hearts to the pure unadulterated reality of you that our lives might become an unfolding extravagant response to all that you are. In Jesus’s name, amen.