The Heart of Devotion

Ps.119:2 - Blessed are they that keep his tesimonies and that seek him with the whole heart.

I consider myself a devotionally minded fundamentalist. Don’t you just love the labels, especially the ones we give ourselves? What I mean is I hold to all the cardinal doctrines of the faith which in my humble opinion are these:

* That God exists in three persons or personal manifestations but specifically that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are all divine and together are the same God.
* The Scriptures are God’s written revelation to mankind and are inspired and inerrant in the original language. The 66 books of the Bible are the only source of divine truth and all other truth will support the Scriptures.
* Jesus was God incarnate in the flesh. He lived a sinless life and completed His primary mission when He died on a cross as a sacrifice for the sins of the world. Redemption is only through His shed blood and He offers this salvation to everyone who believes.
* Jesus died and was buried and rose again on the third day substantiating who He was and what He did. Sin and death are now defeated in Him forever.
* There is no salvation outside Jesus Christ, and a sinner must believe on Jesus with some elementary knowledge of the gospel to be saved. No one who hasn’t heard the gospel can be saved, hence the importance of world wide missions.
* Every person who dies goes forever into either heaven or hell. Although it is impossible to fully capture the ecstasy of heaven and the torment of hell, those descriptions will be even more tangibly accurate in eternity.

So there you have it, like the three bears some will consider it too much, some will say it is not enough, but I say it is just right. But I could recite those points like the pledge of allegiance every day and they would still be just cold, hard revelations of truth, systematic truth that is organized in a way to define the distinctives of what I believe and who I am. And then there are the lengthy and verbose writings that attempt disect the chronology of the Spirit’s ministry in salvation. Oh it is not enough to say it is all of God’s Spirit, we must be absolutely solid in our complete knowledge in ever detail, nothing of “I don’t know” mystery that might lend itself to allow people to suspect our knowledge is limited. And the labels, yes the labels, that seek to lend some additional evidence that we know and have done such extensive research that we have entitled it to capture the degree of our surety.

But is that what God is looking for, cause if it is, He‘s got it? Is that all there is in this life we know as Christian, and does the embracement of a few doctrinal statements represent the satisfying essence of what it means to follow Jesus? We tell the lost world, and rightfully so, that it is not enough to know “about” Jesus, you must know Him to be saved. But how often then do we retreat to the safety of a doctrinal exposition about Jesus, albeit true and Biblically sound, but not really exhibiting what it means to be recognized as having “been with Jesus”?

I know, a little “mystical” right? Well it may be time for all of us doctrinally elite to get a dose of what it means to seek the face of Christ in a personal experience of edification and mystery. A computer can spit out copies of a doctrinal statement, but a computer cannot come before God with a broken and contrite heart and actually commune with the Risen Christ and with that be changed from glory to glory. Remember this, it is impossible to come and dine with Christ and come away self righteous and unchanged. I have many, many times come into prayer with the Lord and as I was going through a perfunctory prayer for a certain person or persons I am confronted with the road block of God’s Spirit. And while stopped in my tracks God’s Spirit desires to know why I do not really love those who I am pretending to pray for and why I think I am better than they and why I can pray for them with a dry eye when I believe they are in a desperate situation. And before I can come up with some religious excuse masquerading as a reason I am undone about my own heart and the dearth of real compassion I have at that moment.

You see, humility frames truth while pride covers it. So to the degree we lose the awe of who we really were and what the grace of God alone has done for us we lose the reflection of Christ in whatever we do no matter how noble and right. And our expression of this devotion must go much deeper than just an acknowledgment of a precious doctrine regardless of it’s eternal virtue, it must all begin and end with Jesus Himself. There must come a time in a disciple’s journey when he comes into such relationship with Jesus, fostered by the truth of God’s Word, illuminated by God’s Spirit, and still all by God’s grace, that he continues to feast on those things but His devotion has now been transformed into a personal mystery that affords him a incredible relationship of glory.

Oh how I fear while many are content with almost nothing of the Scriptures, still others have made them as a book of sayings and teachings that remain aloof from the nail pierced side of the Lord who is their very revelation. Jesus is the Word but He is more than a doctrinal test of ink and paper, He is truth but He stands far above our orthodoxy, Jesus desires and receives devotion from all of us. And His heart rather inclines to the sincere simplicity of a ten year old Nigerian little girl who tells Jesus her absolute love for Him than a room full of dry theologians. One man uses his doctrines to spiritually equip him to gain a greater access into the throne room of His Lord and Master, while the other rather admires his systematic rolodex of organized truths and considers them his arrows for others.

So do you have a heart of devotion for Christ? Not just a mind that is so tightly tethered to written truth that it keeps you from a passionate and invisible intimacy that reveals an inward devotion to Him launched by that written truth which now is alive in your very heart and now that embracement of truth is transforming your inner man into a personal Mt. Moriah upon which you bow and offer yourself again and again for Christ’s sake? A computer can be imputed with doctrinal truth, God is looking for worshipers who because of that truth that has been revealed to them have been loosed from formalism and religion that is as dry as last year’s bird’s nest, no, this heart of devotion can be seen weeping during a song or even while driving. This heart is tender over its own shortcomings and sin, and this heart loves Jesus, the Person and Savior, more than the set of truths about Him which have illuminated Him to us. And this heart of devotion to the Lord of Glory and Mercy that it will sometimes be silent when spat upon and mocked. This heart knows Jesus, who is truth, and it rides with a coming destiny, and in the midst of speaking, loving, defending, and proclaiming truth, the Incarnate Truth is never tarnished or weakened and so our devotion to Him renders the victory settled, the battle remains His alone. In that we can and should humbly show compassion and love to our enemies, for in any devotion to our own emotion and verbal strength we show Him weak and us strong. And that is grievous error in and of itself.

But never forget, dear friend, without the Scriptures we surely would have made a golden calf of our own self serving imaginations, but our challenge is to allow the Spirit to teach us without worshiping the teachings and not the great Teacher. Let us never lose the deep fires of devotion that must kept burning in our hearts for Jesus, but allow the Spirit to blow on those embers and stoke the light of worship again that affects our bodies and not the reverse. There is only one true God and we by His own grace have not only been allowed to know Him, we have been brought into His family forever. That thought should elicit the finest and deepest devotion in and of itself. Like Miphibosheth we have been summoned not just to eat scraps at the back door of the palace, we have been given a seat at the King’s table and asked to dine from the sumptuousness of His divine feast. And gathered around the Mater’s table we will not speak of cold, hard doctrine will we? Will we banter concerning the hollow things of our own making? Will it matter how long the Lord took in creating it all?

I believe we will consumed with a love and devotion for Him who will now appear before us. Those future emotions only inhabit a new physiological home, one made like His. Devotion will be full and unquestioned. And why? Because the Scriptures say we will “see Him as He is”. So dust off your backpack and get to your feet once more, we’re off to see the King! Our devotions beckons us to His side once more and our love humbles us in His presence. With all our learning, with all our debates, with all our perspectives, with all our doctrines, with all our “ologies”, let us never, never, lose our heart of utter devotion for the One Who is all in all and the eternal Lord of our very lives indeed.

Hopefully devoted to Him.