A Life of DevotionSample

Devotion is an offspring of genuine love. Whatever a man devotes himself to is what he loves. It thus means that lovers are naturally devoted to the object of their love. We can safely conclude that many are not devoted to God because they don't love Him. A lot of people seek God for many reasons other than a genuine desire to know and please Him. In John 6:26 Jesus rebuked those following Him and exposed their intentions of following Him because of temporal things and personal gain. At face value when you consider the way the crowd was looking for Jesus you would think these are genuine seekers, but Jesus knew their hearts that they weren't looking for Him because they understood that He was the bread of life but because they wanted bread for their carnal satisfaction. How easy it is to deceive ourselves and others that we are truly devoted to God when we are actually devoted to our own desires and longings. As long as God seems to us to be a means to an end and not the end itself we will never be truly devoted to Him. Rather, we will seek to use Him to get our ultimate desires.

God wants to be our heart’s desire and only object of our love. God wants to be our beginning and our end as well as everything in between. God wants us to live by faith because faith sees only God and focuses on only God. God wants us to be seekers of Him and not seekers of Him because of things. God indeed gives good things but to the genuine seeker and devoted Christian, God is his Highest Good- his SUMMUM BONNUM. As long as our heart is in part seeking other things as our highest good, we will never be truly devoted. This is because a double minded soul will be bereaved of genuine devotion. Jesus said no one can serve two masters (Matthew 6:24). We are either devoted to Him alone or we are not devoted at all, for God would never be an option if He is not the focus.

Prayer:

Father, rid me of my lust and idols that make me double minded. Help me to seek and be devoted to You alone now and forever.