Wholehearted or Half-baked: Why I'm trading easy for obedient.
Easy wasn’t enough. God called me higher. This is the story of why I said yes to a harder path and how obedience is reshaping my future. It’s time to look at your own path, too.
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I’m going back to school!
Yikes!!
Starting school after a 30-year break is a big jump. This month, I’m reflecting on the prompts that led me toward my decision (HERE is the first). The process began well over a year ago; however, this series of posts will focus on the prompts I felt during the 2025 calendar year. This means looking back at what I was reading, thinking, and hearing from God as I was making my choice. So, I scanned through my journals.1
This was the source I used to look back.
One final note: In general, I knew a change was coming. By the Fall of 2026, I had determined that I would take a definitive step toward what was next. The big question I wanted to answer: What was next?
Wholehearted Obedience
The Old Testament records the story of a King of Judah named Amaziah. An entire chapter of the Bible is dedicated to this man, but the authors give us a picture as to how we’re supposed to feel about him in the opening verses:
“He did what was right in the eyes of the Lord, but not wholeheartedly.”
-2 Chronicles 25:2
As we read on through the chapter, we find that this single-sentence judgment of Amaziah is encapsulated in one defining moment. He marches out to battle against an enemy nation with his troops, along with a contingent of mercenaries from neighboring Israel.2 A prophet confronts Amaziah about trusting in a hired army rather than wholeheartedly trusting in God. It’s at this point that Amaziah does what’s right in the eyes of God. He dismisses those warriors, goes into battle with only his troops, and is rewarded with a decisive win.
If only Amaziah had stopped there!
Going against all logic, he returned home with the spoils of war, and Amaziah began to worship the gods and idols of the nation he had just defeated.3 His sin is compounded by pride, and Amaziah challenged the more powerful Israel to war. He suffers a humiliating defeat from which he never recovers.
Amaziah’s heart was divided between God and the world around him, and he was never able to recover. What is true for Amaziah is true for us, because evil lurks in all of our hearts.
The Line Dividing Good and Evil
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was born in Russia just after the Bolshevik Revolution and served as a decorated officer in the Soviet Red Army during World War II. He was arrested in 1945 for criticizing Joseph Stalin in a private letter and was sentenced to eight years in a forced labor camp.
Solzhenitsyn became a novelist, historian, and dissident, best known for exposing the brutal realities of the Soviet Union's labor camp system. It is in these writings that he considered the concepts of good and evil. We all want to believe there are good people in the world, and there are wicked people. It makes it much easier to deal with both an evil world and our shortcomings: “There are cruel people in the world, but I am just a good person who makes mistakes here and there.”
In his observations of the brutality in those Soviet prison camps, Solzhenitsyn observed:
If only it were so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them.
But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being.
-Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
The propensity for evil resides in me as much as it does in the worst characters in history. By my nature alone, I am closer to the faithless end of Amaziah’s life than I care to admit. This is a sobering thought.
It’s here where I’m reminded of that cold February morning when I read a second passage of Scripture linking my thoughts to Amaziah’s divided heart.
Am I Blind Too?
The Gospel of John records the story of Jesus healing a blind man, which leads to a massive debate among the religious leaders (Pharisees) around Jesus. Oddly, the discussion didn’t revolve around Jesus spreading mud on the man’s eyes made with Jesus’ own spit and dirt, but it was about healing him on the Sabbath day of rest.
The Pharisees are beside themselves with this breaking of the law, and the debate among themselves and the community rages on for days. The man’s parents are called in for testimony, and finally, the man formerly blind is thrown out of the synagogue.
Eventually, the man finds Jesus, and Jesus tells him:
Jesus said, “For judgment I have come into this world, so that the blind will see and those who see will become blind.”
Some Pharisees who were with him heard him say this and asked, “What? Are we blind too?” -John 9:39-40
The line dividing good and evil cuts through the hearts of the Pharisee, the man born blind, me, and you. This passage highlights how easy it is to be deceived into believing I am wholeheartedly following Jesus, yet remain blind to areas where my heart wanders from God.
It leads me to ask multiple questions, starting with, Am I blind too?
We all can be blind. We can adhere closely to Christianity and be blind (the Pharisees were deeply religious men who strictly adhered to the law of Moses). We can be near Jesus and be blind (the Pharisees, the crowds, even Judas was near Jesus day in and day out). We can hear the words of Jesus and be blind (everyone with Jesus that day heard his words, but some remained blind to the truth he spoke).
Again, these are sobering truths. I can easily be blind to what God is doing, and I have the propensity within me to be anything less than wholeheartedly obedient to God. So what do I do?
What is the answer to this flaw deep within all of humanity, individual and corporate?
How to live a wholehearted life for God.
I could easily list a dozen ways to live with eyes open. However, I’ve narrowed it down to six, and for the sake of space, I’ve grouped these six things into two categories. If we can learn to practice these two things, we will learn to live a wholehearted life for God.
1. Believe. Confess. Obey.
A life of faith in Jesus means choosing to follow him. Following Jesus is not easy. He promises us abundance along with heartache and sorrow. This is where we are tempted to be less than fully committed to God. Believing isn’t easy, so it is always accompanied by obedience and confession.
We must choose to obey the things God makes explicit in the Bible, and we must abide by the things God speaks directly to our hearts. This is when following Jesus becomes significantly more challenging than simply attending church a few times a month. It is also more complex than the type of obedience the Pharisees practiced, characterized by strict rules and laws.
Static obedience is much easier than the dynamic and changing obedience to what God is doing in this moment.
Following Jesus is being prepared to move and change in a relationship with a living being. So often, I get it wrong in the following bit. It is where I find myself blind, less than wholehearted, and I discover the line of evil in my own heart. So, I am faced with the need for confession.
Following Jesus means admitting to God and the people around me that I’ve failed.
I was reading about the Catholic doctrine of purgatory today. Catholics believe that after death, there is a need to work off the minor (venial) sins we have left unconfessed. Hell is reserved for those who choose not to follow Jesus, but purgatory is for believers who haven’t confessed the hidden evil within their hearts.
I don’t know if I fully buy into this doctrine, but I do believe there is power in confession. Confessing the dark places in my life gives me sight into the areas where we’ve been blind. Ultimately, confession helps me worship with a whole heart.
2. Hear. Think. Grow.
To journey a long and fruitful life with Jesus, we must put in place tools for growth. Growth is the goal because it allows more and better fruit. To grow in Jesus, I listen closely for those things that are of God and meditate deeply on them.
I have written extensively over the last ten years on what it means to hear God (see HERE and HERE). There are methods as long as my arm to help me hear God, but Scripture, prayer, meditation, and contemplation are the four core ways I consistently hear God. It doesn’t matter your preferred way to hear God. What matters is that you actively put yourself in a place to listen to him.
Just as crucial as hearing God is considering what he means when he speaks. Often, especially in more fundamental circles, this is where Christianity gets a bad rap; we don’t think enough. Too frequently, Christians don’t think critically about the Scripture we read, sermons we hear, books we listen to, or the “word” God speaks to us. God has given us a host of tools to hear and understand him, and thinking is among the top. Our ability to think critically sets us apart from the rest of creation, so we are challenged to put this to use.
God has more for us
If you can put these two categories of following Jesus into practice, you will be well on your way toward living a wholehearted life for God. You will continue to struggle with the line of good and evil running through your heart, but you will have tools to uncover and battle the evil lurking within you.
That's why I decided to return to school. In some ways, the step to go to school, specifically, wasn’t the wholehearted part of following Jesus. I could have made one of multiple different steps—what mattered was taking any step forward. I could have easily stayed in the same place, doing the same thing, doing nothing new. I could have worked on projects around my house or taken up new hobbies to fill the coming void, but that wasn’t the wholehearted devotion God was seeking from me.4
He has more for me.
If you’re curious, this is the big takeaway from my original question: What’s next? Most importantly, God has more for me, and He wants me to step into it more confidently and wholeheartedly.
God has more for you, too. Will you wholeheartedly step into that place? Your steps of faith will help erase the line of evil that runs into your heart, open your blind eyes, and move with a heart fully devoted to God.
What is God calling you to in the new seasons of your life? How do you maintain a wholehearted devotion to God?
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I keep multiple journals going at the same time, but two were particularly helpful in this process. One journal is from my daily bible reading. Most days, I come across a verse or two from my reading that resonates with me. I copied that verse into my journal and jotted a few thoughts from the scripture.
The other journal is specific to my Word of the Year—2025 is “KNOWLEDGE.” When I run into something specifically related to the theme of knowledge, I will make a note in this journal. It could be Scripture, an idea from a book, something I hear on the radio or from a podcast, or an observation from life around me.
As a reminder, after the reign of King Solomon, a civil war in Israel split the nation. The northern part of the county was known as Israel, while the southern part was known as Judah. Politically, Judah was always the weaker of the two, but spiritually, Israel consistently rebelled against God. In the long term, both nations are judged and destroyed, but Judah lasts longer than Israel.
In the days of the Old Testament, it wasn’t just two armies facing one another in battle, but their gods who the armies represented (texts and manuscripts from various sources acknowledge this). So, Amaziah returned home with defeated gods and worshipped them in favor of the God who won the battle.
This is where Scripture doesn’t speak specifically to my situation, but my internal dialogue with God does. This is where I need to listen to God and be obedient to what he is speaking to me.