How To Be Wholehearted

0:00:00     Hey, are you living a dull, boring, going nowhere life? Well, I’m going to tell you how to change that on the next more faith, more Life podcast. Hello, everyone, and welcome to another more faith, more life podcast. Do you mind if I start just talking about you and how you might be when it comes to God and the kingdom of God and all the things being a Christian or churchgoer or whatever, or if you’re not, you should be. I wish you were.

0:00:23     Can I talk about you? Well, maybe I’m not talking about you, but I’m going to talk about most people, right? And at least I’m not talking behind your back, right? I’m going to just talk about you for a minute. Here’s where most people, this could be you, probably, but not necessarily most people who believe in God, even people who go to church every single week, they love their church pastor, they love their friends, and they’re good people, they want to be good people, they want to be honest people.

0:00:52     But the reality of it is, God is the faraway God. You’ve ever heard the term the man upstairs? Well, you know what? The key is to get the man to come downstairs, and we don’t want you to have to wait till you die and go upstairs to see. No, we want the man to come downstairs and be the near God. But for most people, God seems, you know, just being transparent. We can, we can say all kinds of religious things. Like they say, you know, God’s in the house and did you feel God? And God’s here and all those kinds of things, and then God’s in my heart. Jesus is in my heart, you know, I believe in Jesus. He’s in my heart. We say all those things, but the reality of it is most people are living with a faraway God.

0:01:35     They don’t really hear much from him. They don’t have a real tight relationship because they try to talk and don’t even know what to say. Maybe we talked the last podcast about rambling on like a pagan, maybe trying to find the words, and then they don’t know, so they start speaking Elizabethan English, these and thous and thus and all that. Well, maybe that’ll get in because that sounds real spiritual if you’re, if you watch a movie, isn’t it interesting how, how many, how many movies with Jesus, movies, we’ll just call it that have Jesus speaking with an English accent, you know, like an English actor more than anything, like a stage actor, you know, and Judas is always ugly and Jesus is always good looking and he has an English accent type of stage voice.

0:02:22     Right. So all these things get us all confused of where we’re at and what can we do to fix this? How can we fix this? How can we fix it so God’s not the faraway God, and he doesn’t have to be. He doesn’t have to be the man upstairs. And you can feel the presence of God. You know, the. I mean, I noticed God all day long. I just noticed him. Or I could say I noticed Jesus, if we put it on that level because he became human, so that we have human contact with the spirit of God through him, you know, and through the spirit.

0:02:55     And so we could say Jesus, but I notice him. Awareness, the awareness of God all day long. Right. And if I get busy doing something just a little bit, you know, and I get busy and I’m focusing on that, that awareness of God’s going to come back in a little bit. So it’s just all day long, it really makes it nice living that way. An awareness of the real God. How do you know he’s real? I just hope. I just know.

0:03:15     I’m aware of him all the time. So anyway, how do we get there? I guess that’s what I need to say. Okay, let’s back up now to just a little Bible story. Incidents where God wanted to send the children of Israel into the promised land. And they’re going to spy it out. They’re going to spy it out. And spying it out was supposed to build their faith that God was sending them into a great place. Look how great it’s been. You’ve been, you know, you were slaves. You had to make bricks. You were the lowest of the lowest in Egypt. And now I’m going to give you this land, and I want you to go look at it and see what’s there.

0:03:50     So you prepare the people, prepare your hearts, and you know what a great God you serve and what he’s given you. So they get the twelve spies and they go spy out the land. And ten of them, though, come back, they shaking in their boots, we might say. They’re so afraid. They said, first of all, first of all, it is a great land. They gave a good report to that. It’s a great land. The grapes are big, the crops are wonderful, the land is great, it’s all wonderful. But there’s a big, big problem. What’s that, guys?

0:04:16     They’re giants. There’s these big guys, big people, and they are controlling it. And we are not able to take this land because of them. Ten of them said that. Well, two guys came back with another report, Caleb and Joshua, and they said no, no, no, we are more than able, we are able to do this. And of course they’re reflecting on why are we able to do it? Not because we’re giants, not because we’re better than they are at anything really, but because God is on our side and God’s going to give us this land and we’ll figure out a way. He’s going to figure out a way. We just need to believe God and go in and take it.

0:04:51     Right. Well it didn’t turn out good for the ten and the others. They didn’t get to go in. A lot of people died over their report so they were so afraid they’re going to go in and get beat up by the giants. Instead they all died in the wilderness anyway, never getting to see any of it except Caleb and Joshua and their descendants and their families and they grew and others and that because they said no, we are well able to do it. Well when they came back with that report that no, we can’t do it. And everybody and God just had enough and he said this, how long will this wicked community grumble against me?

0:05:26     And I think we need to be careful with that, that sometimes our prayer lives and our relationship with God is not just continual grumbling. We grumble about life. We pray because we have to, because things aren’t the way we want them to be. So we’re going to try to change things. We’re grumbling, we’re unhappy, we’re dissatisfied and we kind of bring that attitude in prayer or all we do is pray about problems and we don’t ever, ever do anything else.

0:05:49     Well here it says the servant Caleb, which I just talked to, he was one of the ones that went in to spy out the land with the, he said he has a different spirit, he’s different. Isn’t that something? Think about it. Why can’t you be different? Why do we have to be kind of among the people that hardly ever pray? They hardly, they just go to church, they sort of participate but they don’t want to go too far. You know, that thing like there’s always that feeling like, you know, they’re afraid somebody’s going to go too far.

0:06:17     Well they’re probably afraid you’re going to go too far if you have, if you’re of a different spirit, you know. So anyway he had a different spirit and listen to this and he follows me wholeheartedly. Caleb is a follower of God, a follower of Jesus. In today’s world I want to be a follower of Jesus. And God said, he follows me with his whole heart, right? He’s in it with his whole heart. Not half heart, not part heart, not hard on me. No mix.

0:06:44     I have a, my heart is on the Lord. I love God. I need to love God. What, with my whole heart? With your whole heart. And then out of that love and out of that heart flows all the other love, everything. You become a person that can really love, really help other people, really supply their need, really have them, because your whole heart is not on yourself. And that’s what’s stopping you. I mean, that’s what keeps God far away. That’s why you’re serving the far away God. Your heart’s not really on him. Your heart’s on you.

0:07:13     And you’d like to get him to come downstairs, right, the upstairs God. You’d like to get him to come downstairs and give you some mercy, give you some grace, give you some money, right? Give you a better job, give you a better help correct my, make me straighten my husband out or straighten my boss out or straighten my church out. All these wacko people, couldn’t you do something about them, Lord? And so it kind of becomes a grumbling thing just trying to get God to come down and help us and change things and make life easier for us so we can take it easy, take it more easily and.

0:07:46     But here it says Caleb won the day because he followed with his whole heart. Now get this. He thought, I will bring him into the land he went to and his descendants will inherit it. He gets it. He’s going to get the land and his kids and his grandkids because somebody was willing to be different and not be afraid to be different. And I don’t mean weird different. I’ve seen those, too, as I seen my full share of weird Christians.

0:08:16     It is weird. And they say weird things. Some of them are so weird, you know, they’re telling you every dream they have a dream. They hear God speak all day long and they’re telling you all the stuff God’s saying all day long. And they have a dream about the God guiding their life. But listen, listen carefully, carefully, carefully. A lot of weird, but when they talk, it’s all about them. God told me, I heard this. God said to me, let me tell you what God said to me. God gave me a dream. God told me, I’m to do this. God sent me.

0:08:48     Ah, there’s a lot of me in there, right? Where’s the rest of us so wholeheartedly? Is your heart on God? You love God. You just have to admit it or not. I need to love God with my whole heart. I need to learn what that means. What does it mean to love something with all your heart? And then out of that heart flows everything else but God. Anyway, God. God does not like grumblers and complainers. You need, boy, do we live in a grumbling, complaining.

0:09:15     I mean, come on, the Internet’s full of grumblers and complainers, right? And accusers and all that kind of stuff. But Caleb was different, and our churches right now are desperately in need of different people. And I don’t mean weird, like I said, just different. Wholehearted people. Wholehearted worship leaders, wholehearted pastors, evangelists, teachers. I don’t know if you believe in prophets and apostles, but that’s beside the point. Just wholeheartedly. Well, actually, the worst thing you can do is have someone come, which I have said, you know, I’m an apostle. God told me I’m an apostle. I joined the apostles group, and I paid $500 so I could get the title of apostle.

0:09:54     And then they go like, but they’re on themselves. They’re not wholeheartedly on God. They just talk about themselves and want to tell everybody what to do and how to straighten out everything. And all the things we’re doing wrong or a prophet, they come in and all they do is prophesy. Just stuff, stuff. And you can tell what they’re trying to do is set themselves up in your eyes. It’s not wholeheartedly. It’s setting themselves up. They want you to recognize them as a prophet. Okay?

0:10:21     So anyway, all this is big traps for everybody, but you can be different. You can have a different spirit. You can be different. Daniel in the Bible, you know, Daniel in the lion’s den said he had a different spirit. He was recognized as being different. Not weird, but something to be admired, a difference to be admired. I. And really, I think Americans and people around the world, different countries, I think we admire people that do something wholeheartedly.

0:10:50     There’s not very many people around like that. Most of them we admire football players. You know, we’re here, you know, let’s just say it. We’re here in Kansas City where everybody talks about the chiefs a lot of years, and everybody knows Patrick Mahomes’ name and Travis Kelce’s name, right? And all these. Everybody knows that, right? But how did they get where they are? Right? How did they get there?

0:11:18     Wholeheartedly. Did something wholeheartedly. I’m not saying that that’s maybe what? Everybody shouldn’t be wholeheartedly football, even as a fan. But notice that we have an admiration. Somebody who went wholeheartedly as a soldier, marine, maybe gave his life, you know, in the service of our country, wholeheartedly brave, courageous, the heroes of the past, heroes of world War two and other wars, or a basketball star, or a politician, or someone who just wholeheartedly serves the community, whatever.

0:11:51     We admire people like that, and yet there’s one place we don’t. It’s a fearful thing. You’ll find this to be true, but people are terrified of wholehearted Christianity. Terrified. Today we try to have it, but it’s so being so criticized, so criticized in a country, because they don’t want wholehearted Christians. They’re afraid. And probably that’s our own fault, because a lot of our wholehearted Christianity has been accusations, trying to correct other people who really are not interested in God.

0:12:19     Why am I trying to get them to live like me if they don’t want to? And they don’t even hardly believe in God and they’re not interested in God, but I want them to live. My morals, my truths. Come on, it’s not going to work. They have to want. They have to want to if they want to. Let’s do. Let’s go. I want to convince you it’s the best life ever to live wholeheartedly for God, but I’m not going to go out and spend my life wrecking other people and down and telling them they’re the problem. They’re the problem. They’re the problem.

0:12:48     But wasn’t the problem in Jesus day, and it wasn’t the problem in the Israelites day. The problem was God’s own people were not wholehearted. And so when you’re not wholehearted, when you’re not serving God with your whole heart, other people who are not serving God, who don’t go to church, who don’t care about God, they see that and they’re not going to accept a half-hearted Christian. What kind of game would we have, Zion? What kind of football team would we have if Patrick Mahomes was talented but half-hearted?

0:13:18     Right. Just sort of flopped the ball around, you know, you couldn’t follow it. You couldn’t get interested, you know, and other things, like if you find somebody that’s not wholehearted, eh, you know, you’re not interested, but somebody that’s really into something, we admire them, that they’re able to set their hearts on full. And so now what we need, we need pastors and leaders. We need evangelists, we need wholehearted people.

0:13:43     But as you know, you find out later it wasn’t so. It wasn’t so. Yeah, they have big church, they have big ministry, they preach good sermons, they’re good looking, you know, they’re well liked. But then, eh, you see some loose things in their life. You see their own children don’t love their parents. Their own children don’t want to have anything to do with God anymore, and then they don’t. And then the marriage is rough and they get divorced or it’s just, it’s just not a good marriage, just a rotten marriage, even though, well, how do you solve all that? How do you do that?

0:14:11     Wholehearted Christianity. You get your whole heart on Jesus, your whole heart on the kingdom of God. And I know it’s probably scary to you. You probably get scared if somebody just seems a little bit too zealous, a little bit too much, you know, and we want to, why in Christianity and religion do we always want to tell people, slow down, be balanced, right. But we don’t admire people who are balanced.

0:14:33     We don’t follow people who are balanced. We don’t listen to people who are balanced. We listen to people who are over the top. Right. They’re the ones that become the superstars. They were over the top as actors. They were over the top in writing. They’re over the top as a politician. They’re over the top people. And so now they have these distinctive places and we admire them. We may not do what they do. I don’t, not going to go into politics, but I admire certain people.

0:15:02     And yet when it comes to religion, church, why are we so afraid to be wholehearted, to put our whole heart into this? Because God’s big on wholeheartedness and he doesn’t like grumbling and he doesn’t like complaining. And so, you know, what is the ultimate victory in your life? What is the ultimate success in your life? Well, we could talk about that. Could be a business, could be family. You want a successful marriage, you’re really hurting. And you just, like, if I could just get this marriage going, get my kids back, loving me and me loving them, we’ve got fighting and stress.

0:15:35     We don’t have enough money. There could be so many things, you know, I work at a job I hate, you know, and people hate me. Just on and on the list goes of things that we’re dissatisfied with. And maybe some of it’s legitimate, but how do we get out of it? How do we get out of it? Are you going to get out of where you are being half-hearted. Okay? Now, I could say, you could say, well, I’m going to, I’m going to be wholehearted now on my job, okay?

0:16:03     But that doesn’t work out because people do that and they get, they make more money and they do better, but they lose something along the way because their whole heart’s over here. Now, the kids feel left out, or you gave so much to your job, you’re tired. Every time you come home, whether you be man or woman, you come, you’re just exhausted. You don’t have anything left to give to the family or anybody else, just yourself, you know?

0:16:23     So the key is not half-hearted. Half-hearted has not worked for you. That’s the way most people are. That’s why I’m talking about you. Because if you’re like most people, it’s half-hearted religion, half-hearted church going. Everything’s half, just the right amount that we do it. Okay? But I don’t want to go overboard. Why, why wouldn’t you? Nobody became a superstar. Nobody became famous. Nobody changed the world by doing anything half-heartedly.

0:16:48     Now, you, you may not be smart enough to open your own business and make millions of dollars. Maybe say, I’m no good at finance. Maybe you’re not an athlete. You’re not a good enough football player. You’re not a good enough baseball player. So let’s forget that, right? I. What can you do? You know what, though? Everybody can be wholehearted on God. Everybody gets equal opportunity with God. You give your whole heart to Jesus. You give it. You start thinking, you start praying, you start reading your bible, you start thinking, what can I do in my church?

0:17:17     How can I go in there with a better attitude? How can I build people’s faith? And if you’re not a pastor or leader, encourage your pastor. Say, go for it. We want to go for God. We don’t need all these sermons about how sick we are and how broken down we are and how hurt we are. Just trying to get us through another week. Let’s rise up. Let’s hear a victory sermon. Let’s hear who we can be. Let’s hear what God says we are.

0:17:39     We want to hear that. We want to hear that we can take this land. We don’t want to be ten spies saying, oh, there’s giants out there. We’ll never be able to make it. Just hang on. I don’t think we can do this. I don’t think we’re going. We can handle it. It’s just so bad. And then grumbling and complain, no. Be like Caleb and Josh says, no. We can, you know what? Wholehearted people know we can do this. Go tell your church, we can do this.

0:18:00     We can grow, right? We put our hearts to it. We’ll grow if we put our hearts to it. The man upstairs, people say, the man upstairs is God. We can get this man to come downstairs and we can really have him in our services instead of yelling out in the middle, God’s in the house and Jesus is in my heart. We’re going like, okay, good phrases, but where? What? What is it? How come, if God’s here, how come we’re so half-hearted looking at our watches like we just can’t wait to go do something else?

0:18:25     How come we mumble, sing? Or we just let the, we let the stage people perform and we just sort of follow along, right? Where’s your heart? You want to change your life? You want to get the blessings of God? Change your life, be a blessing, be admired, be a leader, leave a legacy, help your descendants and your kids. And kids after your grandkids, after you. That’s all you got to do. Give your whole heart.

0:18:54     I can’t. I can’t give my whole heart to science. I’m not smart enough. But I can give my whole heart to God and so can you and so can your family. You can get your, you can win your kids and let them know this is the way to go, you know, kid says, okay. I work with hundreds and hundreds of kids during every year, year after year because we have a private school and, and, you know, and it’s such a wonderful place, k through twelve, and we got preschool and all that stuff.

0:19:22     I’ve seen hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of kids, and the biggest mistake they make is they kind of follow along when they’re in school and you know, and their family and all that. Then they get out on their own and you realize it was good having what they did, but they never really got wholehearted. And the key to it is you get a kid and it says, maybe there’s, maybe the kid’s not the greatest at math or, you know, they’re not a great reader. They wish they could read better, but they’re a slow reader and everybody seems to be a better reader or whatever.

0:19:51     Or whatever. They can’t sing, you know, they can’t sing, can’t dance, can’t play an instrument or whatever. What do you do with a kid like that? Because what do you say? Well, just settle and settle for seconds, right? No. He said, look, you have every opportunity to rise in any place in the world with God. Give your whole heart, kid. Hey, kid. You give your whole heart. You do God wholeheartedly. And all the other things will be added to you and all the things that you need. And you’ll find your place and you’ll get good at it. And if nothing else, you’ll be good at serving God.

0:20:23     You may find you can preach. You may not be the world’s greatest preacher, but you’re wholeheartedly preaching. You put your heart into it. You’ll be better than most, because most only are half-hearted when it comes to God. That’s what most do. I hope that’s not you, but I just know people. So here we go. What are we going to do? Change the course of our life. How do we do it? Be like Caleb and Joshua.

0:20:47     Be like Daniel, who went into the lions, did all of a different spirit. Caleb said we can do this. Caleb said we should do this. Not just we can, but we should. Because doing it glorifies the Lord and shows what a great and mighty God. And eventually it got done. They inherited the land. And that can be you, your descendants, your children and your grandchildren after you set the standard that we serve God with our whole heart. And it’ll change the course of your life. All right. Till next time. Bye.