“Enjoy the personal satisfaction of having done your work well.”  Galatians 6:4 NLT.

Wholehearted is the one acceptable standard for your relationship with God.

My thoughts and comments today are about being “wholehearted.”

Casual is not an attitude that breeds success. Like every father trying to motivate a teenager, my Dad would often say, “Allen, anything worth doing is worth doing well.”Recognizing that my temperament was not Type A, Dad taught me the importance of being serious and focused on the things that truly matter. Casual is an attitude only for things of lesser importance.

Here is how I see this working out. Our culture seems to have made casual and leisure into a religion of sorts. Dress has gone from casual to careless. Social communication has embraced casual until grammar and spelling, and complete words and sentences, are deemed non-essential. Street slang and accepted levels of profanity have gravely discounted language. Marriage and relationships are treated casually, as though dispensable and replaceable by something or someone newer and more presently exciting and less exacting. Casual has become a way of life, and other things have suffered or been lost along the way. Casual is the adversary of commitment; good is the enemy of best.

This is not a tirade to preserve the past, but a caution that the spirit of such a lifestyle does not impose itself on your spiritual life. Wholehearted is the one acceptable standard for your relationship with God. Actually, your faith and the wholeheartedness with which you live it should be the influence that makes you desire every area of your life to be more diligent and effective. Paul advises, “Be sure to do what you should, for then you will enjoy the personal satisfaction of having done your work well, and you won’t need to compare yourself to anyone else.” Galatians 6:4 NLT. You cannot afford to be casual about spiritual matters; they have life and death, even eternal consequence, for you.

You need to know who God says you are, and not mindlessly accept what the culture suggests that you can or should be. You need to know what God’s work is for you to do, and not merely accept the world’s current of career choices and images of success. And when you know who you are and what you are to do, give yourself wholeheartedly to success there.

That was the deciding difference between young David and his brothers, and because of that Goliath was defeated. Again, let me say,wholehearted is the one acceptable standard for your relationship with God. “Above all else, guard your heart, for it affects everything you do.” Proverbs 4:23 NLT.

“Whatever you do, do it heartily, as for the Lord rather than for men; knowing that from the Lord you will receive the reward of the inheritance. It is the Lord Christ whom you serve . . as servants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart. With good will render service, as to the Lord, and not to men.” Colossians 3:23-24NAS/Ephesians 6:6-7. Life is simpler when you always give God your best.

My prayer for you today is that God will hold your heart, all of it at all times!