August 3, 2026 Devo

Today’s passage is my Life Verse. It’s the scripture that has become the description of how I want to live in my walk of faith with God. God says that it’s the key to discovering all of who He is and all that He has for us. His hope in speaking it here in Jeremiah is His desire that His People, now in exile for their disobedience, will return to Him. God desires that this time they will come wholeheartedly.
Can we be honest for a moment? We don’t often do that, do we? Come wholeheartedly, that is. Like the people of Judah, many of us come offering God only pieces of ourselves. Some of us want just enough of God to believe that we’ll escape hell. We don’t really want the fullness of His Holiness. We just want enough of Him to escape judgment. We go through many of the motions of the life of faith, but we’re withholding what God wants most: To be the First Love of our lives.
Others of us withhold parts of our lives that we struggle to make God “Lord” over. Some want to hold onto their unhealthy habits or addictions. Some want to hold onto relationships that they know are not pleasing to God. Still others hold back their money, their business dealings, or their negative or critical attitudes. Sometimes we justify it by claiming to be “as good as anyone else.” And we’re right. We’re as good as any other half-hearted Christian. But that’s not what God wants.
Still others of us withhold parts of ourselves that we really don’t want to deal with. Our abuse as children. Trauma we’ve never gotten over. A loss that still weighs us down with grief. We’re often like the person too afraid of the dentist to let them take care of that tooth that is abscessing. In the words of Rick Warren, God can’t heal what we won’t reveal. So we keep that wounded part of our life to ourselves, rather than letting God in to do His healing work. Listen very carefully to this. God wants to be Lord over our pain as much as He does over our sin. It’s a TRUST issue.
Listen to the Word of the Lord again. “You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.” What would it look like for you to live out that passage today? What part of your life are you withholding? What are the secret places, the private places, the painful places that you need to surrender over to the Gentle Hands of God? God doesn’t want just a part of you. He wants ALL of you. Come wholeheartedly today. That’s God’s Word for you today.