Psalm 103:1 (ESV) Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless his holy name!

There is a recurring theme throughout scripture and it is about giving your all to God. The verse above has the psalmist blessing (praising, worshipping) the Lord with everything that is within him. Jesus taught us that we must love God with all of our heart, soul, mind and strength (Mark 12:30), and the Apostle Paul admonished us to serve wholeheartedly (Ephesians 6:7). Why does God require that we give Him our all? There are a number of reasons for that.

First of all, God has given us everything. He has given us life, has given us strength, has given us provision, has given us protection (even when we didn’t know it) and most important of all, has given His Son, Jesus, to us. To those of us that have received Jesus as our Lord and Savior, He has given eternal life. He has given His very best so for that reason alone, we should give Him our best and our all. But besides that, we need to know that we were created by God and for Him. Our lives were designed to function through a relationship with our Creator. We were designed for the purpose of having fellowship with God and enjoying His presence. Sin came and broke all of that and our hearts turned away from Him. A heart that is away from the one who created it becomes a wandering heart. A wandering heart spells trouble because that wandering heart will never find the satisfaction that it is looking for unless it finds it in God. But the heart won’t look there because of its sinful condition so it looks elsewhere and gets into a lot of trouble in the process. In short, we don’t function well without God. We weren’t made to function without Him. To be away from God is to miss the purpose for our existence, for we were made to be with Him.

 Having knowledge of this alone does not help us because our hearts are sinful and even when some come to a relationship with God through the Lord Jesus, they won’t do well unless they give Him their everything, including their whole heart. The reason why this is vital is because whatever space we don’t give to God remains corrupted. Our sinful condition is fatal and the antidote is to die completely to who we were before and live wholeheartedly to God. That is the only way that you can make sure that you didn’t leave any space for sin to control you, for the world to entice you and for Satan to deceive you. There can’t be any space that is not occupied by God through the Holy Spirit because anything that He does not occupy is prone to be susceptible to corruption. In light of all this, give God your all. Love Him, serve Him, praise Him and worship Him with everything in you. That will keep you safe on this short journey through life until you see Jesus face to face when you get to heaven. Besides, He is absolutely worthy of it all!