How much is too much?

  Tuesday of this week during my oldest bible lesson, we read one of the most profound statements, I have read or heard from anyone.  We were reading about Samaria being under siege. The opposition surrounded the city and the Israelites inside were starving....They were eating doves dung and donkeys heads.  The King would walk around the city walls in his royal robes everyday.  While doing this a woman came to him and asked for his help.  "Help me, my lord, yesterday a woman came to me and said, kill your son today so we might eat and tomorrow we will kill mine.  She has hidden her son."  The King tore his robes and there was his sack clothes. For those who do not know they would wear sack clothes when they humbled themselves before the Lord. When they were mourning. 
   This King however did not humble himself completely before God, he chose to continue to wear his regular clothing.  How often do you yield to God completely?  Is is every Sunday, Christmas and Easter (those holidays are actually all about God not Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny), when you are really in a bind, when something bad has happened in your life?  Why is it okay to submit to God just at these times and not the rest of the week, year or your life? Is that the kind life really acceptable to God? Since He created you to worship and serve him, I think not. Are there benefits to knowing God? Yes, his unconditional love, his time and patients, mostly being in his presence.  Does it mean your life is going to be easy? Absolutely not, you will still have life trials and he does not promise to be cake walk. 
   Have you yielded completely? Or just in the some things you really need help in? The profound thought or question I have for you is has your "Church (the building not you) became a social club where men talk about football and the women exchange recipes." I will take even further, is the place you worship where you try to keep up with the Jones' and God is there but not the center of your life or focus?  Are the messages watered down to "draw" more in?  Is that what church is supposed to look like.  God has rules, try your hardest he understands... Church attendance is down and we are losing a lot of young people not because it is not fun enough, not cool enough, or does not play the right type of music.  Church in America's problem is the lack of God in the places we gather to worship, watered down messages, and mostly God has been kicked out of every public place; schools, work, government.  How can you expect to grow the next generation of Christians when for twelve years five days a week, they are taught a worldview that does not line up with the Bible.  When truth is relative and not absolute.  Mostly Christan's are looked at as intolerant, hypocrite, freaks.  Why are we looked at this way?  Could it be the life you are leading? Are you a Christian one day a week and hiding God under your clothes the rest of the week?  Why?  Stop living two lives live one. So what you if you are labeled a freak. Intolerant, because you believe in absolutes, big deal, I would much rather believe in an absolute God and be absolutely wrong, then disappoint the one who created me. Made me just so, for this life I have been blessed with. 
  So what are you going to do different today? Maybe you are already living the life you should, most of us, myself included, have hidden things we need to work on. Yield completely today, and the rest of the year. See what God has in store for your life and your family's.