I'm all in.

I'm reading a book for class and I came across the phrase "Love the Lord with your whole self." Now, I'm baptist, so this is not the first time hearing this phrase, in fact, there is a good chance I've heard it THIS WEEK! But for some reason it stuck out to me and I thought about it in a different way.

Love/follow God with your whole self. That means every single part of you. You can't half-ass following God. Your mind, body, soul,actions, and personality all come together to follow God with your whole self.

And its wonderful, but my "whole self" is not aw-inspiring or really awesome. Sometimes its not even good. My whole self if a combination of some great things like a servant's heart, and some awful things like jealousy and anger. So how do I love/follow Christ with my whole self? Do I go all in, with the good and bad? OR do I guard myself, and hide away the awful parts of my self?

I say go all in!! Here's the thing. As you are walking along the metaphorical road with Jesus, you can't say "Oh you go ahead, I'm going to stop here and bitch for a while, but I'll catch up with you." No. We follow and love God with our WHOLE self, not just the nice parts. God doesn't call perfect people. But he does call WHOLE people. He is asking us to be vulnerable, to put our self, our whole self, out there for God to use, shape, mold, and change.

This is really easy to type up in a blog, hit enter and be done. In reality, its hard to love with your whole self. Its much easier to say "God, I'm going to follow you with my whole self, except my  fill in the blank  (anger, anxiety, drinking, need for control, self-doubt. Whatever you like). I'm going to hold onto that, and even though its part of me, I'm going to keep it secret."  But when we follow God with our whole self, we are allowing him to shape us into these incredible people, and that my friends, is pretty cool.