WALK ON BOTH LEGS

15 Truths About Loving God, Serving People and Fulfilling Your Assignment

The Two Voids, the Authentic Self, and the Journey from Intimacy with God to Fruitfulness and Multiplication

Blog link

https://www.otakada.org/walk-on-both-legs-15-truths-about-loving-god-serving-people-and-fulfilling-your-assignment/

Monday, September 7th, 2027

There is a kind of emptiness that money cannot fill. Success cannot fill it. Marriage, recognition, possessions, influence, applause and achievement cannot fill it. Only God can. But there is another kind of emptiness that many believers do not immediately understand. It is possible to genuinely love God, pray, worship, study Scripture, fast and pursue His presence, yet still carry a persistent feeling that something is missing. You begin to wonder, Why am I still restless when I love God? Why does it seem as though there should be more to my life?

Sometimes we interpret every such feeling as spiritual decline. Sometimes we think we need another conference, another prayer meeting, another fast or another spiritual experience. Yet there may be another explanation: you may be standing firmly on one leg while neglecting the other.

Jesus gave us a remarkable summary of the entire law and the prophets in Matthew 22:37–40: “You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind… And the second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” There are the two legs: Love God. Love people. Relationship and responsibility. Communion and commission. Presence and purpose. Receiving and releasing. God never designed us to choose between them. We were created to walk on both legs.

1. THE FIRST VOID: THE HUNGER FOR GOD

Deep within the human heart is a hunger that creation cannot completely satisfy because it was designed for the Creator. You can try to fill it with money, relationships, career, titles, houses, travel, possessions or influence. You can fill every hour of your calendar and surround yourself with people, yet when everything becomes quiet, the hunger can return. There is a place in us that belongs to God, and nothing created can permanently occupy the place reserved for the Creator.

God did not merely create us to know about Him. He created us to know Him, walk with Him, hear Him, love Him and increasingly become transformed into His likeness. This is why Jesus identified loving God with all our heart, soul and mind as the first and greatest commandment. Everything begins there. Purpose without God can become ambition. Service without God can become exhausting activism. Achievement without God can produce success without meaning. The first leg, therefore, must remain firmly planted: Love God.

But the first leg is not the whole journey.

2. THE SECOND VOID: THE HUNGER FOR PURPOSE

The second commandment is inseparable from the first: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” The God who draws us toward Himself eventually turns our eyes toward people. Genuine love for God must ultimately produce something beyond ourselves. God did not create you merely as someone who needs something from the world; He also created you carrying something the world needs from you.