Good enough - Soul Searching

And He said to him, “ ‘YOU SHALL LOVE THE LORD YOUR GOD WITH ALL YOUR HEART, AND WITH ALL YOUR SOUL, AND WITH ALL YOUR MIND.’ (Matthew 22:37)  It is not enough to love God with all of our heart, but also our soul.  Our life for Him is more than just physical, it is a life where even the very core of who we are, is a life desiring to be lived for Him.  Our purpose and being should be a constant commitment to His way and His word.  Love is not content with just being good enough.  Love strives to be the best in everything we are and everything we do.  To love God with all of our soul leaves no room for our fleshly and selfish desires.  It is not what we want, it is what God wants for our lives which we seek and that is what loving God with all of our soul is.  A true test of where our commitment lies is simple: are we willing to give up anything for the One who created us?  Can we commit ourselves a few hours a week to dedicate in the gathering in His house of worship, not only because He commanded it, but because we want to?  It was not the substance of Cain’s offering that was being rejected; it was the sentiment in which he gave.  The very emotions of the motivation and the reasoning behind our living for God and giving to God should be that of joy.  Each one must do just as he has purposed in his heart, not grudgingly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver. (II Corinthians 9:7)  Not because He commands us to, but because we want to.  If we can change our attitude and make our service and giving our own and let is be done with a spirit of joy and willingness, our Christian perspective will radically change.  To think of His immeasurable grace and His invaluable goodness in our lives should be reason enough to give back to Him and to live wholeheartedly for Him..  Our love for Him should consume our very soul and being that we want only to live for Him and please Him and serve Him.  Yes He commands it, but until we want it, then it has no purpose or meaning.  Love for Him because of a requirement is a vain and shallow love.  It is certainly not the love He had for us.  His love for us was so deep that He left His throne in glory and entered into the physical realm of this world only to allow His life to be taken by the hands of His creation.  In Exodus 21, we see a strikingly beautiful picture of a deep abiding commitment to a slave to His master.  If his master gives him a wife, and she bears him sons or daughters, the wife and her children shall belong to her master, and he shall go out alone. But if the slave plainly says, ‘I love my master, my wife and my children; I will not go out as a free man,’ then his master shall bring him to God, then he shall bring him to the door or the doorpost. And his master shall pierce his ear with an awl; and he shall serve him permanently. (Exodus 21:4-6) He loved his master and the gifts bestowed upon him by his master that he did not want to leave.  He wanted to serve the master and he wanted to continue to enjoy the rewards of his master that we was willing to endure a painful process to establish to those around him that he was in fact accounted for and was already owned.  That is true commitment.  That is love with all your heart and soul.  How far would you go?  True love for God ignores the comforts of self and the desires of flesh and willingly gives it up for the one who gave His all and freely gives us all.  Daily, we must search within our soul to discover how committed we truly are and constantly remind ourselves how far God went for us.  Our soul must not be satisfied with simple living for God, just enough to slide by as a Christian in the eyes of this world, our soul must be committed to showing God outright surrounded by the watchful eyes of society that we truly are His people and our lives truly belongs to Him.  We can’t do this and hold to some wanton desire of the world’s offerings.  That is not love for God.  Do not love the world nor the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life, is not from the Father, but is from the world. – (I John 2:15, 16)  Yes we are to reach the world, but we do not reach the world by living the way the world wants us to live or even by our own idea of what we think.  To be more than just good enough, we must do more than hear His word, but we must also…do them.  But prove yourselves doers of the word, and not merely hearers who delude themselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks at his natural face in a mirror; for once he has looked at himself and gone away, he has immediately forgotten what kind of person he was. (James 1:22-24)  Don’t forget who you are, take His word in which you hear and read and allow it to take root deep into your soul and obey and follow it to allow yourself to be molded into the person He wants you to be.  Are you good enough?  If you are content with good enough, then you need to do a little soul searching.  We must love Him with all of our heart and soul.  With everything we are and do, it must be a direct reflection of where we are in life.  How far would you go for God?