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Walking wholeheartedly with God
By Stephen Seamands

“When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the Lord appeared to Abram, and said to him, ‘I am God Almighty; walk before me, and be blameless’” (Genesis 17:1-8, 15-19).

Have you ever wondered what God meant when he commanded Abraham to “be blameless” before him? The King James Version says, “Be perfect” and some of the modern translations still render it that way. But either way, “be perfect” or “be blameless”—what did it mean for him? What does it mean for us?

Understanding the original Hebrew word—tamim—can help shed light on that. The root word it comes from is used over 200 times in the Old Testament. And it’s translated in a number of different ways such as “complete, full, sincere, sound, undefiled, upright, whole, unblemished, perfect.”

So what God seems to be saying is this: “Abraham, I want you to be fully, completely, entirely, wholly devoted to me. I want you to be wholehearted in your love for me.”

Wholeheartedness. I think that’s the idea that catches it best. Being wholehearted in our relationship with God, as opposed to being half-hearted. The Psalmist prays, “Give me an undivided heart, that I might fear your name.” That’s what God is after in Abraham—an undivided heart, a heart that is wholly devoted to him. Of course, this is what God desires for every believer. This is, in fact, the great commandment—to love God with all your heart and soul and mind and strength.

Isn’t that really the essence of holiness? Loving God with all your heart? John Wesley certainly thought so. Read his A Plain Account of Christian Perfection and you’ll notice that he says this again and again. “Scriptural perfection is pure love filling the heart,” he says, “and governing all the words and actions.”

But how do we come to a place where we love God wholeheartedly? Abraham’s own life journey can help us answer that question. Through a series of events in his life, he was brought to a place of wholeheartedness in his relationship with God.

Notice that Genesis 17:1 says, “Walk before me and be blameless.” The idea of walking with God in Scripture implies a relationship with God that is dynamic, ongoing, and continuous—like being on a journey with someone. It was as he walked with God and before God in the journey of life that Abraham was confronted with the issues that were preventing him from wholehearted love for God.

There were two things in particular that God had to get Abraham to come to terms with. I believe they are issues every Christian will have to confront sometime in his or her spiritual journey.

First, Abraham had to be brought to a place where he wasn’t willing to settle for “second best” in his relationship with God. You see, fourteen years before God called Abraham to walk before him and be blameless, Abraham and his wife Sarah had done something that they shouldn’t have.

Ever since Abraham had set out on his adventure of faith, God kept promising him that he would be a father of a great nation. But after ten years of promises with no pregnancy, Abraham and Sarah finally decided to take matters into their own hands.

“Let’s get realistic, Abraham,” Sarah said to him one day. “I’m 74 years old. There is no way I’ll ever get pregnant. Take my slave girl, Hagar. Sleep with her. God must want to fulfill his promise to you through her.”

Now there was nothing immoral about Sarah’s suggestion. It wasn’t an indecent proposal. In fact, for childless couples back then, it was a culturally acceptable thing to do. So that’s what they did.

And it produced results. Abraham slept with Hagar, she conceived and nine months later Ishmael was born. Abraham finally had a son and an heir of his own flesh and blood.

That was thirteen years ago. Now Ishmael is a teenager. He’s gotten his growth spurt. He’s becoming a handsome young man. Abraham and Sarah are happy and contented.  Over the years, they’ve developed a deep, clinging affection for this boy. But now God comes to Abraham and says, “Walk before me and be perfect.” And then God reminds Abraham of his promise: “I will make you exceedingly fruitful…and as for Sarah, she is going to get pregnant and you’re going to have a son through her. He’s going to be the child of promise.”  

Yet when Abraham hears this, how does he react? Does he jump for joy? Does he shout, “Yes! Hallelujah! Praise the Lord! You’re finally going to answer our prayers.” Not at all. Instead he pleads with God, “O that Ishmael might live in your sight” (Gen 17:18).

Do you get the picture? God says to Abraham, “I’m going to give you Isaac now. The child of promise. My best for you.” Abraham’s only response is, “What’s wrong with Ishmael? We don’t need another child. Why can’t you bless Ishmael? Let him be the heir of the covenant.”

Have you ever done that in your relationship with God? Pushed for an Ishmael when he wanted to give you an Isaac? Contented yourself with God’s permissive will rather than his perfect will for your life?

There are lots of ways we can do that. Sometimes we do it in a way similar to what Abraham and Sarah did. We do it when we try to accomplish God’s will and God’s purposes in our own way, in our own strength, according to our own timetable, instead of in God’s way, in God’s strength, according to God’s timetable.

That’s essentially what Abraham and Sarah did. “The son of Hagar, the slave-wife was born in a human attempt to bring about the fulfillment of God’s promise…” (Galatians 4:23, New Living Translation). In other words, they took things into their own hands. They said, “We’ll do God’s will, but we’ll do it our way.”

Do you ever find yourself saying the same thing? It’s not that you want to be disobedient to God’s will. You just want to do God’s will your way and on your terms. And you want God to bless what you’re doing.

To get Abraham to the place of wholeheartedness in his love, God has to get him to the place where he won’t settle for Ishmael instead of Isaac. And even though God will one day redeem the mistake Abraham and Sarah made, bringing good out of the situation by blessing Ishmael, still there is a wrenching, difficult day, several years after Isaac has been born, when God says, “Get rid of Hagar and Ishmael.  Kiss them goodbye. The inheritance belongs to Isaac.” And so early one morning, Abraham, reluctantly but firmly, sends them away.

Maybe God has brought you to a place like that, too; a place where he’s calling you to turn away from some Ishmael in your life, some second best, so that you inherit Isaac, the child of promise, God’s first best for your life.

But now several more years go by. And now, Isaac has grown up into a fine young lad.  As Abraham and Sarah have watched this child of promise grow, their hearts have been knit closer and closer with his. He is the apple of their eyes. All their hopes for the future are pinned on him.

But then, one day, God says, “Abraham, take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love so much, and offer him on Mt. Moriah as a sacrifice to me.” Here we come to the next thing God has to get Abraham to deal with.

Second, God has to bring Abraham to the place where he’s not only willing to give up Ishmael, the second best, but also to even give up Isaac, God’s first best, the very child of promise.

Often God’s best gifts, God’s Isaacs, God’s children of promise become more important to us than God himself. God’s gifts can usurp the throne of our hearts which only the Giver is meant to occupy.  So we end up making idols of them, worshipping them instead of him.

For example, we pray and cry out to God to fulfill a God-given desire for a friendship, or a marital relationship, or a child, or for a fulfilling job, or career opportunity.  And after much agonizing and surrendering and waiting, God finally comes through. And it’s so obvious this is God’s answer. We didn’t make it happen, God made it happen. This is no Ishmael that we’ve conceived; it’s an Isaac, a child of promise.

But then there comes a time, where God’s incredible answer becomes a problem, a hindrance in our relationship with God. Because we’re delighting more in this fulfilled desire of our hearts than we’re delighting in the Lord himself.  We’ve made an idol out of our Isaac.  The child of promise has now become a problem child! 

So as he did with Abraham, God, who is jealous for the place of supreme love in our hearts, will bring us to a Mt. Moriah—a place where we have to sacrifice our Isaac, to surrender the very best gifts that he has given us.

And then, of course, God gave Isaac back to Abraham. “That’s alright, Abraham, it was only a test and you passed it. I just wanted to know, do you love me more than these? Now I know that you fear God because you wouldn’t withhold even your only son, Isaac.

“Now you can love Isaac, not in an idolatrous way, but in the way I’ve intended for you to all along. Because your supreme delight is in me, I will fulfill all of your heart’s deepest desires.” To get Abraham to the place of perfect love—wholehearted love—God had to get Abraham to surrender, to give back even Isaac, the very best gift he had given him.

I’ll never forget a bitter cold Sunday morning in February about thirty years ago.  I was in the sanctuary of the local church where I was the pastor. In fact, I was rehearsing the sermon I was going to preach in a couple of hours.  At the time, it was just me, all alone in that sanctuary, preaching my sermon out loud, my words echoing around, bouncing off the empty pews. That Sunday I happened to be preaching on this very story.

But a strange thing happened during that sermon rehearsal. It doesn’t happen to us preachers very often. I heard my own sermon!

As I was rehearsing, I saw with absolute clarity my Isaac. It was the very ministry God had given me. I had made an idol out of it. I was using it to meet my own personal ego needs. I was using it to build my own kingdom as much as Christ’s.

I remember stopping my sermon rehearsal in mid-sentence and just putting my head down on the pulpit. “Oh, God,” I cried out, “Forgive me. Forgive me for loving my ministry more than I love you, for finding my joy more in it than in you.”

Something inside me died that day and ministry was different after that. There was less drivenness in it, and more freedom and joy. It was still mine. But I wasn’t clinging to it like I had been. I was able to hold it lightly because I was clinging more to him!

Walk before me, and be blameless. To get Abraham, to get us, to that place of wholeheartedness in our love for God, he has to get us to surrender our Ishmaels, our second bests, and our Isaacs, God’s first bests, that we’ve idolized and loved more than the Giver, God himself.

When Abraham heard those words that day—“walk before me, and be blameless”—little did he know what obeying God’s command would cost him. As you read them now, addressed to you, you may not know what it will involve for you either.

But that’s alright. What the Lord wants from you now is your willingness to obey, your commitment to the process. When you stand at a marriage altar, you say, “I do” and “I will.” At the time, do you really have any idea what you’ve gotten yourself into? And yet those words, that commitment, that covenant you enter into is crucial. It’s the foundation of your marriage.

That’s what the Lord desires. God says to us, walk before me and be blameless. God desires you to say, with as much resolve as you can, “Yes, Lord, I will. Whatever that means—letting go of the second bests and even the first bests—I choose to walk with you. Make me wholehearted in my love for you.”

You may say, “I want to do that, but frankly I don’t know if I can keep that commitment.” Well, I’ve got good news for you. I know you can’t, but I know someone who can.

“I am El Shaddai, God Almighty; walk before me, and be blameless.” This command to Abraham comes with the revelation of a new name of God. El Shaddai—the first time it’s found in Scripture. It’s associated with the almighty power of God.

God is saying to Abraham and to us, “It’s because of who I am—the Lord strong and mighty—that I give you this command. It’s because of my enabling power that you can walk before me and be blameless. You see, I will put my very own Spirit within you and cause you to walk in my ways.”

In response to your commitment, your surrendered act of will, God will work a sovereign act of grace. He will set your life on a trajectory, on a pathway, a highway of holiness, where, because he is working in you, you can walk before him and be perfect.

Remember, the apostle Paul told the Thessalonians that he prayed that God would sanctify them wholly. He said, “Faithful is he who called you. He also will do it!”

That’s what God is also saying to you. “I am calling you. I am El-Shaddai. As you open your heart to me, I also will do it!” 

Stephen Seamands is professor of Christian Doctrine at Asbury Theological Seminary in Wilmore, Kentucky. He is the author of numerous books including Holiness of Heart and Life, A Conversation with Jesus, Wounds that Heal: Bringing Our Hurts to the Cross, and Ministry in the Image of God: The Trinitarian Shape of Christian Service.



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