“Now then,” said Joshua, “throw away the foreign gods that are among you and yield your hearts to the Lord, the God of Israel.” (Josh. 24:23)
One of the definitions of yield is to “give way to pressure.” We usually think of a yield as an amount of product or to put something on pause. When Joshua instructed the Israelites that they were to yield their hearts to the Lord, he was not talking about putting something on pause. He was talking about a total surrender.
The only way we can unabashedly surrender everything we are and everything we have is to let God have all our hearts, our entire beings. To yield our hearts, we must not allow other things to squeeze him out of our lives. To yield our hearts to the Lord, we must get rid of things and thoughts that will pressure our relationship to go on hold, even threaten or destroy it. It means we must get rid of all idolatry in our lives. If our focus and allegiance is committed to anyone or anything other than God himself, that thing is an idol. We need his help to remove it, to throw it away from our lives.
The Lord is not content with divided attention. He wants your head, heart, hand, and habits to be solely concentrated on him. Pause for a moment right now and let that sink in. Consider how you might yield your heart to the Lord.
Seek the Lord with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.
Jim Dunn is the president of Oklahoma Wesleyan University in Bartlesville, Oklahoma.
© 2020 Wesleyan Publishing House. Reprinted from Light from the Word. Used by permission.
Scriptures taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®.
