God Doesn’t Want Part of Us, He Wants Our Whole Heart
When we follow Jesus we must do so with all our heart. There is no turning back to what we left behind. He wants our full attention, not part of it. We must go all in for Jesus.
Follow Me
Jesus gives his followers various instructions about what they must do to be part of team Jesus. He tailors his words to the individual situations of the people who ask what they must do to inherit eternal life. His most common response is, “Follow me.”
He says this a couple dozen times. All four of the biographies of Jesus (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) include this instruction (such as Matthew 16:24).
To go all in for Jesus starts when we follow him.
No Turning Back
When we follow Jesus, we abandon our old path because we’re on a new one. There is no turning back. When Lot and his family run for their lives before their city of Sodom is destroyed, God says, “Don’t look back.” Lot’s wife does. She doesn’t make it.
Though the way forward, the path to life, was clear, Lot’s wife worried about what she was leaving behind. She had a divided heart, and it cost her her life (Genesis 19:17, 26).
Jesus says, “People who look back when they’re plowing aren’t fit to be on my team” (Luke 9:62). A person who is plowing and turns around will plow a crooked line. To go straight, the person plowing must focus on what is ahead.
To successfully go all in for Jesus means that we must look straight ahead and not turn around.
All Our Heart
Both the Old and New Testaments tell us that God wants us to pursue him with our whole heart. This is most often found in Deuteronomy, where it sometimes adds all our soul and all our strength (Deuteronomy 6:5).
Later, when a teacher asks Jesus to identify the most important commandment, he says we must love God with all our heart and soul and mind. Then he adds a second one that we must love others as much as we love ourselves (Matthew 22:36-40).
To go all in for Jesus means that we love him with all our heart, soul, strength, and mind.
To follow Jesus with all our heart, there is no turning back. We must go all in.
Peter DeHaan writes about biblical Christianity to confront status quo religion and live a life that matters. He seeks a fresh approach to following Jesus through the lens of Scripture, without the baggage of made-up traditions and meaningless practices.
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With Christmas and New Years Behind Us, It Is Time to Get Things Back to Normal
It’s great to have time off from work for the holidays, wonderful to spend time with family, and enjoyable to feast upon holiday foods and delectable deserts. However, it is also good to return to a regular routine—for things to get back to normal.
For as wonderful as the holidays are, I like normal, too. Normal is how I keep disciplined and remain focused; it allows me to get important things done.
But the transition from holiday mode to normal mode takes time for me. I think it does for others as well. The days after the holidays did not seem normal and I think many people shared my struggle to return to normal.
However, I think today was nearly normal and I suspect tomorrow will be completely normal. At least I hope so because I have work to do!
Peter DeHaan writes about biblical Christianity to confront status quo religion and live a life that matters. He seeks a fresh approach to following Jesus through the lens of Scripture, without the baggage of made-up traditions and meaningless practices.
Remove Worldly Distractions to Make More Space for God
We live in a world of clutter. We’re surrounded by things that constantly demand our attention, if only for a fraction of a second. Some of it is our own doing, such as our technology with its 24/7 beeps and incessant call for our attention.
Other things are out of our control, such as the constant deluge of marketing messages that surround us in both our physical life and our online world. Beyond these two areas is our environment, the reality we create for ourselves to live in.
Combined, these things clutter our lives with constant distractions.
Each time one of these things encroaches our life, we make a split-second decision to give it attention or to ignore it. This happens so frequently that we seldom realize it, but it occurs several times each minute, maybe even each second.
Most of the time we deftly deflect these distractions, but when added together over the span of a day, they represent tens of thousands of potential distractions we must deal with.
Though we handle most of these interruptions subconsciously, they combine to weigh us down, to weary us and open us to interference.
These needless micro-decisions compound over time to rob us of our self-discipline and weaken our self-control.
At best, this renders us ineffective, and at worst it opens us to temptation, because we have little decision-making energy left to fight it.
We must do what we can to seize control of our surroundings and remove the clutter from our reality as much as possible. Here are some steps to accomplish this.
Simplify Our Lives
There’s a saying that we don’t own things, but that things own us. There’s truth in this. Each thing we possess demands something of us.
We must take care of it. We must find a place to put it. Does the utility of it exceed the demands that it’s presence places on us? Too often, I fear, the answer is no.
Our possessions take up space, both physically and mentally. We must get rid of what we don’t need, what doesn’t bring us joy, and what doesn’t add value to our lives.
We must purge junk, because each item that we have represents another micro distraction.
Some people go so far as to say that if we haven’t use something in the past three months, we should get rid of it. I’m not that extreme, but I do experience joy each time I eliminate something that only clutters my life.
Reduce Distractions
I spend much of my working day in front of the computer. With dual screens and always online, technology provides many distractions. I must declutter my computer.
First, I pursue the goal of “inbox zero.” Quite simply, I strive to keep my email inbox empty.
I don’t let things pile up, because I know that each pending message serves as a micro distraction all day long. Ten messages means ten distractions each time I glance at my inbox.
To work toward achieving this goal, I try to deal with all messages each time I check my inbox. This means I quickly delete, respond, or handle each one.
But I don’t continually monitor my email. Instead I periodically check it and handle messages in batches.
Next, I apply this strategy to my web browser. My goal is to move toward one open tab. If I’m not careful, it’s easy for me to have ten or more tabs open.
Yet I know, each open tab serves as another micro distraction each time I glance at my browser, which happens frequently throughout the day.
Right now, I have seven tabs open, that’s seven distractions each time I look at that screen. How many can I close? Each time I do, I eliminate one micro distraction.
Third, I also look at my physical desk. Each item laying on my desktop represents another chance for distraction. Ideally, I aim for one pile of papers, with the top sheet representing my focus for that moment.
This way, when I glance away from my computer there’s only one thing to see.
It reminds me what I should be doing.
Celebrate That Less Is More
As we remove things that don’t matter, that don’t provide value, and that don’t fill us with joy, we can better focus on what remains. We can celebrate what stays, what matters most.
Though the idea that “less is more” is an anathema to our materialistic society, it’s a mindset we must diligently strive to reclaim.
Simplify Processes and Procedures
We should look at each thing we do in our life, both at work and at home. Over time, tasks balloon to encompass more steps and take more time than they need to.
We must become an efficiency expert and look to streamline everything we do. As we pursue this, it gives us more space and more time.
The Simplest Solution Is Usually the Best
As we consider that less is more and look to simplify what we do, we come to the inescapable conclusion that the simplest solution is usually the best one.
Don’t make anything more complicated than it needs to be. Streamline everything, and cut out all that doesn’t matter.
Embrace the Results
Why should we do this? Why should we strive to take more control of our lives by removing the distractions that reduce our ineffectiveness and rob us of peace?
As we do this, it increases our effectiveness.
But more importantly, it also takes a huge swipe at the multitude of things that distract us from realizing God’s presence and threaten to push him to the side of our life or even outside it.
God is present in every moment, but too often are endless distractions keep us from being aware of him.
We must remove things that distract us from God, so we can place him in the center of our reality where he belongs.
Though getting rid of some of our stuff may seem like a trivial exercise, it’s the first step to reducing distractions and embracing our Creator and Savior as the focus of our lives.
As God says, “Be still, and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:10, NIV). Removing distractions from our lives will help us do this.
Peter DeHaan writes about biblical Christianity to confront status quo religion and live a life that matters. He seeks a fresh approach to following Jesus through the lens of Scripture, without the baggage of made-up traditions and meaningless practices.
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It’s important to set goals, both for our work and for our self.
Goals Move Us Forward
Without goals, it’s easy to drift from day to day, week to week, month to month, and year to year—and nothing really changes. One of my goals is to attend two writing conferences each year. This helps grow me as a writer and meet others in the industry.
Goals Give Us Clarity
Goals reveal what’s important to us. Activities that aren’t relevant to our goals need to be given lower priority or even eliminated. One of my goals is to write every day.
Goals Reflect Our Focus
Without goals we can easily go in four directions at once, never accomplishing anything. Another of my goals is to watch less TV. This gives more time to read, write reviews, and do other things to advance my career as a writer.
Goals Facilitate Success
I want to publish my books, but that won’t happen just because I wish it. I need to work at it. One critical step is to present my writing to agents and publishers, often in the form of a query.
Submitting a query will not guarantee success, but failing to do so will ensure failure.
Peter DeHaan writes about biblical Christianity to confront status quo religion and live a life that matters. He seeks a fresh approach to following Jesus through the lens of Scripture, without the baggage of made-up traditions and meaningless practices.
How did it all begin? That is, where did we come from? Let’s go back to the beginning.
I don’t intend to end the debate over the beginning of life and our reality. This won’t change anyone’s mind. But I do want to offer something to think about.
As you know, there are two schools of thought on our origin: in the beginning we evolved out of nothing or we were created by enteral God.
Either point of view requires a degree of faith to accept—and for me, evolution actually requires more. Here’s why:
Follow the theory of evolution backwards, starting with people. Follow them to land animals, to water animals, to plants, to single cell organisms, to amino acids, to a mixture of gases, and so forth.
No matter how far back you go, the nagging question is always there: where did that come from?
At some point, there is the inescapable conclusion that something had to come from nothing.
For me, that takes a great deal of faith to accept—seemingly more faith than to simply say that an ever-existing God, living outside of time-space, just made it all.
If the use of the word faith is a bit off-putting, then consider Occam’s Razor, the principle that says the simplest solution is usually the correct one. To me, being created by eternal God who always existed is simpler than having evolved out of nothing.
I’ll go with that: In the beginning God created us, our world, and our reality.
Peter DeHaan writes about biblical Christianity to confront status quo religion and live a life that matters. He seeks a fresh approach to following Jesus through the lens of Scripture, without the baggage of made-up traditions and meaningless practices.
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Instead of Resolutions, Form Habits You Can Sustain
Do you normally make New Year’s resolutions? How’s that work for you? When I used to do that, things never turned out so well.
I might make it a couple weeks, rarely more than a month, and a few times my resolutions were no more than good intentions.
Don’t Make New Year’s Resolutions
That’s why I stopped making New Year’s resolutions. Though I set annual goals for myself, my writing, and my business, I avoid New Year’s resolutions. In their place I work to form habits. Here’s why.
A New Year’s resolution is something that implicitly takes a year to realize. That’s a big chunk of time, 365 days. This represents a huge commitment that’s overwhelming when we look at it from day one.
Strive to Form Habits
Instead, when we seek to form habits, it’s a day-to-day situation. All we need to worry about is doing this one thing today. I can do that. You can do that. We can all do that.
Then tomorrow, we seek to do it again. It’s another one-day commitment. This isn’t hard, and we can do that too. Now we have a streak going. We’ve done this one task for two days in a row. Can we make it three?
Yes, we can. All it takes to make a three-day streak is to do this one task one more day. No big deal. Then, day by day, our streak lengthens. A few days becomes a week.
We don’t want to break our streak, so we continue. A couple weeks becomes a month. By then we’ve formed a habit.
Before we know it, we have a long streak going. When we hit 365 days, we’ve gone for a whole year. But because it’s a habit, we don’t even give it much thought. After a while, we just do it.
Once we form habits, they’re easy to keep—much easier than a New Year’s resolution.
Make Reading the Bible a Habit
I’m talking about New Year’s resolutions because it’s that time of year when our thoughts turn to such things. For people who follow Jesus, our New Year’s resolution may be to read through the Bible during the year.
Frankly, that’s a foreboding task. The Bible is a long book, and some of it—to be honest—isn’t that interesting. Yet it’s important, and we know we should read it.
That’s why we make a New Year’s resolution, but most of us fall away from it after a few days or a couple weeks.
Instead, strive to form a habit of reading the Bible each day. Start one day. It’s easy to do. Then do it a second day. Then, each day work to keep the streak going. Before long we’ve turned daily Bible reading into a habit.
If this is too much for you to fathom, then consider a monthly Bible reading plan, which you can start any time of the year.
And to encourage you in this, our posts for each Tuesday will follow along in our plan to read the entire Bible this year. Hopefully, this will encourage you as you work to form a Bible-reading habit.
Peter DeHaan writes about biblical Christianity to confront status quo religion and live a life that matters. He seeks a fresh approach to following Jesus through the lens of Scripture, without the baggage of made-up traditions and meaningless practices.
Get the Bible Reading Tip Sheet: “10 Tips to Turn Bible Reading from Drudgery to Delight.” Enter your info and receive the free Bible Reading Tip Sheet and be added to Peter’s email list.
Ringing in the New Year often marks a time for making resolutions. CommonNew Year’s resolutions include losing weight, saving money, studying more, finding a better job, improving a relationship, being kinder or more generous, drinking less, and so on.
Well-Intentioned Resolutions
Usually these well-intentioned resolutions are short-lived. Aside from being vague and difficult to determine success, I think the problem is we set ourselves up for failure.
Let’s assume I step on the scale in September and realize I need to lose weight.
But I’ll wait and make a New Year’s resolution to drop the extra pounds. Since this idea lives in the future, I don’t need to worry about it now; I can continue eating as I always have.
In four months I’ll focus on weight loss, but for now, don’t worry.
This gives me four months to further instill my bad habits. Additionally, knowing that in the future I’ll need to be more careful with what I eat, emboldens me to eat poorly now, while I still have the chance.
This only makes the problem worse, resulting in more weight to lose later.
Don’t Put Off the Changes You Need to Make
A much better approach is to begin losing weight right away and not delay.
Instead of waiting until January first to change a habit, introduce a new one, or remove a bad one, why not make changes as soon as the opportunity arises?
Why accumulate a list of resolutions for the start of a new year? Instead, make incremental improvements throughout the year.
If you made a New Year’s resolution, I wish you success. And if you forgot, don’t wait until next year. Begin making changes right away. Any day is a great day to start improving your life.
Peter DeHaan writes about biblical Christianity to confront status quo religion and live a life that matters. He seeks a fresh approach to following Jesus through the lens of Scripture, without the baggage of made-up traditions and meaningless practices.
Let’s Reframe the Idea of a Christmas Sale in Spiritual Terms
This time of year, we so often see the phrase “Christmas sale” that we barely give it a thought. And if we do think of it, we lament the secularization of our holy celebration of Jesus’s birth.
Yes, the commercialization of gift giving and a merchandising mentality of tempting, can’t-pass-it-up sale prices has coopted one of Christianity’s most cherished celebrations.
This distraction of Christmas sales takes us from what the birthday celebration of Jesus’s arrival on earth was meant to be, moving us to something spiritually unintended and eternally unhelpful.
The idea of a Christmas sale is to entice us to buy something that will make us or our loved ones happy. Connecting a sale to the memory of Jesus alarms us.
Yet before we reject the phrase Christmas sale, let’s re-examine it from a spiritual perspective.
While we don’t want to offer of Jesus for sale, in hopes that someone will buy him, we do want to promote Jesus in hopes that someone will follow him.
If we think of sales in terms of marketing, isn’t that what we’re really doing when we tell others about Jesus?
Granted, the thought of marketing Jesus offends many, yet telling others about the good news of Jesus—either through our words or our lifestyle—is, at its most basic form, marketing.
In our marketing of Jesus, we don’t expect anyone to buy him—even if we pretend he’s on sale—but we do want people to buy into the idea of turning their life around and following him.
Each time we see the words Christmas sale, may we connect it with Jesus. I don’t mean in a crass commercialization of him but in a way that reminds us that both in this season and all year round, we need to let others know about him.
Though shocking to suggest it, this might be the true meaning of “Christmas sale.”
Celebrate Christmas in a fresh way with The Advent of Jesus. It’s a forty-day devotional that prepares our hearts to celebrate the arrival of Jesus in an engaging read. Begin your Advent journey now and gain a greater sense of wonder for the season.
Peter DeHaan writes about biblical Christianity to confront status quo religion and live a life that matters. He seeks a fresh approach to following Jesus through the lens of Scripture, without the baggage of made-up traditions and meaningless practices.
With Thanksgiving behind me and Christmas cheer beckoning me forward, it’s hard to think about the new year and the task of making an annual budget. You do have an annual budget, don’t you? I do—and I encourage you to use one, too.
Although I’m an organized person with a penchant for planning, I don’t get too excited at the prospect of making my annual budget. But I know I must.
After all, “If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail.” (Goodreads attributes this to Benjamin Franklin.)
I keep good records of my spending throughout the year, so developing next year’s budget only takes me about thirty minutes.
For people without a good understanding of where they spent their money, planning for next year will take a bit more work.
So invest some time in December to gather needed information to make a budget for the coming year. You’ll need most of this for your taxes anyway, so you need to do it at some point.
Here are some thoughts about budgets:
A budget is a guide, not a straightjacket.
A budget lets us know when we can indulge ourselves a bit and how much; it also alerts us when extra spending is a bad idea.
A budget reduces financial stress and removes a source of potential conflict.
A budget urges moderation now, allowing for more freedom later.
A budget is a plan that moves us towards financial contentment.
A budget helps us to live within our means, to be financially responsible, and to plan for future needs.
To be of maximum use, our annual budgets need to be in place before the new year begins. For me, I usually I’ll wait until after Christmas to make my annual budget, and will be finished before New Year’s Day.
Of course having a budget is just the first step. The key to success is to follow it.
May you have a Merry Christmas, A Happy New Year…and a great budget to guide the way.
Peter DeHaan writes about biblical Christianity to confront status quo religion and live a life that matters. He seeks a fresh approach to following Jesus through the lens of Scripture, without the baggage of made-up traditions and meaningless practices.
Churches Close for Tangible Problems, But Maybe Some Should Close for Spiritual Reasons
In the book of Malachi, God laments about his people. Specifically he’s down on the priests because they show contempt for him. Their worship is so off-track that God wishes one of the priests would just shut the temple doors.
This would at least keep them from lighting useless fires on his alter, from having useless worship. He’s so frustrated with them that he won’t accept their sacrifices anyway.
So why bother? Just close the temple. This is a shocking thought, a seeming heretical idea.
Churches Close Every Day
We hear of churches closing all the time. It’s usually due to one of two things. Often it’s for a lack of funds—because the people left aren’t giving enough to keep the church’s doors open.
The other reason churches close is a lack of people—for too many have left.
Generally these two items are tied to one another. Attendance drops, and then giving drops. Programs get cut, and attendance drops more. This continues in a downward spiral.
Eventually there aren’t enough people left to do the work and not enough money to pay the bills. Shutting down is the only option.
Spiritually Dead Churches Should Close Too
I’ve never heard of a church closing because they lost their way spiritually, because their worship has become offensive to God. Yet I wonder if this spiritual malady isn’t just as common—perhaps even more so.
That their reason for gathering together each week is too off track from what God yearns for.
I wonder if God grows sick of these misled congregations and wishes they would just close their doors.
These spiritually impotent churches are just as dead—perhaps even more so—as the ones who no longer have enough people or money to continue.
Shutdown Institutional Churches
Most churches (and especially denominations) become institutions over time. As institutions they seek to perpetuate themselves regardless of the circumstances.
In their struggle for survival, they lose sight of why they existed in the first place.
Instead of seeking to serve their community and offer salvation through Jesus, their focus grows inward. Their priority is on self-preservation at all costs.
Malachi Speaks to Us Today
Some would argue that God’s words through his prophet Malachi apply only to the priests and to the temple of his day. This is an Old Testament thing. Projecting them on today’s church is taking the text out of context. Perhaps.
But if we can’t learn from the Old Testament, why bother to read it?
In an appropriate application, Malachi’s words to shut the doors of the temple are a warning that we should take seriously today.
When our churches and their service become spiritually dead, God may want us to close our doors and not further profane his reputation.
Before you assume I’m talking about someone else’s church, take a serious look at your own. Is it time to close church?
Learn more about all twelve of the Bible’s Minor Prophets in Peter’s book, Return to Me: 40 Prophetic Teachings about Unfaithfulness, Punishment, and Hope from the Minor Prophets
Peter DeHaan writes about biblical Christianity to confront status quo religion and live a life that matters. He seeks a fresh approach to following Jesus through the lens of Scripture, without the baggage of made-up traditions and meaningless practices.
