This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth; but thou shalt meditate therein day and night, that thou mayest observe to do according to all that is written therein: for then thou shalt make thy way prosperous, and then thou shalt have good success. – Joshua 1:8
If I were to suddenly give you $1 billion dollars, how would you feel?
Now imagine you discovered that the money I’d given you was part of an inheritance that had been left to you, and that I’d short changed you by $100,000.
So instead of giving you the full $1,000,100,000…I’d only given you $1billion flat. How would you feel about that?
Would it help if I pointed out that I’d only stolen 0.01% of the total…that I’d given you “almost all of it”?
This is an intentionally silly example, but one that hopefully illustrates the point.
Because while we wouldn’t dare tolerate being short-changed when it comes to money, we do it all the time when it comes to the Word of God.
Where the Word says “all”, we substitute “almost”.
“Day and night” is replaced by “a lot of the time” or “more than the people I know”.
We make these frequent substations and alterations to the recipe, and then complain about how the Word “isn’t working”.
This has nothing to do with being loved and accepted by God. He loves you and His unmerited favour rests on all who’ve chosen to receive it in Jesus.
But once you’re part of the new Covenant, and you put an “almost” where the Word puts an “all”, your output will vary because of how you’ve altered your input.
Don’t tolerate being short changed of your inheritance.
And definitely don’t short change yourself by not sticking to what the Word says.
Because where the Word says “all”, your “almost all of it” doesn’t count.