Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - A Whole-Hearted Faith | The Writings | 2 Chronicles 25

Episode Date: March 28, 2024

You're either following Jesus, or you aren't. Are you following God with your whole heart? Are you giving him your whole life? In today's episode, Patrick looks at 2 Chronicles and encourages you to strive for a whole-hearted relationship with Jesus. Read the Bible with us in 2024! This year, we’re tackling a group of Old Testament books traditionally known as “The Writings”— Psalms, Chronicles, Proverbs, Daniel, Ruth and more! Download your reading plan now. Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it so that others can find it, too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter@TenMinuteBibleTalks. Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. Passages: 2 Chronicles

Welcome to 10 minute Bible talks, where we connect the Bible to your life. In the time it takes to get to work. I'm Patrick Miller. You either follow Jesus or you don't follow Jesus. You're either getting closer to God or you're getting further away from God. We like our binaries and we like them for good reason. They shake us up. They shake us out of our spiritual slumbers.

And they awaken us to the possibility that our lives may be headed in the wrong direction. We like our binaries because Jesus, Jesus, Jesus himself sometimes spoke in binaries. Check this out. Matthew 1230. Whoever is not with me is against me. Whoever does not gather with me scatters. But he spoke in other ways. Sometimes it sounds like he says the opposite of that. When someone who wasn't following Jesus started casting demons out in his name, he didn't say, all in or bust, buddy. Instead, he said this to his disciples. Do not stop him. For no one who does a mighty work in my name will be able soon afterward to speak, evil of me. For the one who is not against us is for us. It's almost the opposite. Apparently,

you can stay half-hearted for a time, but Jesus expects that time will pass and you will either move on or move in to the kingdom. Studying the kings in the book of Chronicles makes this principle clear in action. Consider this strange verse. Second Chronicles 252. And King Amaziah did what was right in the eyes of the Lord, and yet not with a whole whole whole. heart. What does that mean? He did the right things for the wrong reasons? Or perhaps it means that his devotion to Yahweh was superficial and sporadic. Or perhaps it's just an honest assessment of his life, an assessment that can be made of many lives. We all give God half as much as he deserves and care half as much as we should about him. This verse is not in the Bible to give us a pass. It's in the

Bible to give us a mirror so that we might realize that even if we were kings and queens, we could hope to do little better than we do right now. But even more importantly, it's a window. If we see past Amaziah, we will see forward to the future king from his line who did not live with half-hearted devotion. Jesus. You see, Jesus laid down his whole life in obedience to his father. And the author of Hebrews said he did so for the joy set before him. He died with a whole heart for the whole world so that he could one day raise up whole-hearted humans in a world made whole by his love. Now I hope you can see what's so different about your life and Amaziah's life.

You can see clearly what was only a fog to Amaziah. Your hope is set before your eyes. His hope was but a shadow of what's to come. And because you know the hope that is set before you, you are freed to start living today like the future is in the present. Put differently, if you know that you are destined one day to have a whole heart, and if you know that God's spirit within you wants to give you a whole heart today, then why do you play around with all the sins and idols that keep you from giving your full, whole devotion to Jesus? As C.S. Lewis once put it, we're like children playing with mud pies when we could be enjoying a pleasure cruise. To get out of this predicament, we must learn to see the mud for what it really is. The truth is that we all fear missing out on something.

if we give up the sex or drink or gossip or materialism or greed or coarse joking that keeps us halfway committed to God. We know a day is coming when we won't indulge in such things. And so we figure it's better to enjoy them while the fun lasts. But this makes heaven into a hell and a hell out of heaven. If we indulge ourselves in lust, greed, and selfishness, we are plunging ourselves into a lake of flames and pretending that it's a nice hot spring. It's not nice. It's destructive. the flames wish to return you to dust. So you must develop in yourself a distaste for sin if you want to be wholehearted. You must develop a true disgust with unrighteousness.

This doesn't mean becoming self-righteous towards others and judging others. It's about judging yourself. And how could you judge others when you see the same sickness in you? You see, if you want to be a whole-hearted disciple of Jesus, you need to be able to call mud mud. If you can't do that, you will never be able to enjoy the pleasure cruise, of righteousness that Jesus is offering you. But that's the flip side of things. You also have to develop a taste for righteousness. My two kiddos are very different eaters. My son Oliver loves to eat

just about anything. My daughter, Iris, is a bit more picky. And so one of the things I talk with her about, because I used to be a picky eater too, is that you have to try new things if you want to enjoy them. And some vegetables might look really gross, but it turns out that when you eat them, and if they're properly prepared, they're quite delicious. And so I'm constantly encouraging. her to develop a taste for new things. And this is exactly what needs to happen in us. As a result of the fall, we all have a natural taste for cruddy macaroni and frozen pizza and processed foods. Of course we all want that. That's what we've been raised on. That's what it means to have sin in your life from your birth, from your earliest moments. And what God wants to do

is say, I have something so much better for you, but you need to develop the taste. You need to get a taste for the goodness of holiness, the goodness of righteousness, the goodness of justice, love, and mercy. You see, if you want to live with a whole heart, your whole heart has to want what Jesus has to offer, and you won't want it if you don't have a taste for it. You won't choose the good Napa Valley wine if you've only had Yellowtail. And so you need to ask God, let me experience righteousness and enjoy it and develop a taste in my life for it so that I can be a wholehearted follower of you.