1 Kings 15: Fully Devoted

He committed all the sins his father had done before him; his heart was not fully devoted to the Lord his God, as the heart of David his forefather had been. -1 Kings 15:3

Abijah was one of the “bad” kings of Judah. While a simple scan of the passage reveals this fact, many miss the explanation as to why Abijah was evil. Verse 3 teaches, “His hear was not fully devoted to the Lord his God.”

Unlike David, who was fully devoted to God, Abijah followed the ways of the previous evil kings of his nation. The motive is found in his attitude toward God. Because his devotion was low, his obedience was low. The two are directly and powerfully connected…

…which causes me to wonder why we work so hard to separate these two ideas. We like to say someone is not very committed to God, yet he or she is still a good person or does good things. In some ways this may be true, but lack of commitment to the Lord is directly related to how closely we obey him. We cannot say we will walk in sin yet are truly devoted to God.

So let’s stop perpetuating the lie. Walking devoted to God leads to obedience. We agree with this statement. Yet the opposite is also true. Not walking devoted to God leads to disobedience. How are you walking today?

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Dillon Burroughs is the author and coauthor of numerous books and is handwriting a copy of all 31,173 verses of the Bible at HolyWritProject.com. Find out more about Dillon at Facebook.com/readdB or readdB.com.