Wholeheartedness & Living for God

I'm processing a lot these days, enjoying the extra time with God.. I think most of our lives we waste time going in circles when spending time seeking God everyday makes our lives much more efficient cause we gain His wisdom for our lives through prayer.

Something He's growing me in this season is wholeheartedness. Every person is made to be wholehearted in his passions and pursuits. Most of us don't realize it. We spend extra effort just putting off tasks, and waste more time doing things half-heartedly. But living wholeheartedly, I've discovered, brings much joy. We see the fruit of our highest potential, and we gain the satisfaction of giving our best. Praying wholeheartedly is a paradigm of this. Something I have the freedom to explore this season is praying not as part of my daily checklist, but until my burdens are lifted. Praying wholeheartedly, with all of the mind, the heart, the soul, the spirit, brings inexplicable joy and invites all the fruits of the Spirit..and even more, it quickens things and makes things in the natural align and come together much more quickly according to what you're praying for in the spiritual. 

Also, I had one of my big life questions answered recently by Misty Edwards. IHOP speakers always talk about giving God our twenties'..I guess because it's the only decade you're not tied down by a spouse and kids, and it's when most Christians have come to maturity in their spiritual walks to be able to minister to others. But already 3 years into my twenties, my question has been for a long time, "How do I give my twenties' to God? What does that look like?" A year and a half ago, I thought the only way to do that was to pack my bags and move to the mission field in Asia, where most people haven't heard the gospel. But God has shown me that there are so many more possibilities than doing solely ministry, that He can use us for greater influence than we can ever think upon even in a secular arena. Really, because He's an all-powerful, limitless God who can use anything to reach anyone, who can even use pleads spoken in the private of one man's prayer closet to change a heart on the other side of the continent. 

Giving this decade of our lives to God, or any decade, actually entails one thing: living out the First Commandment. Me, I constantly measure my amount of "living for God" by how many outreaches I've done, how many people I've ministered to, how much ministry work I've done, etc. But the only way to measure how much you're living for God is how much you're living out the First Commandment: loving Him with all your heart, your mind, your soul, your strength. For some, it may mean packing their bags and hauling everything to go to unreached people. For others it may mean living at home and daily dying to self in order to be a good witness to an unsaved family, friends, and co-workers. Both may be equal expressions of their extent of loving God and others. The First Commandment, for sure, is different in every season for every person..it is however the Spirit leads one to love God and people. It's going the extra mile to love.