Am I all in?

 I was reading a book the other day and the author mentioned some verses in Luke. I have read the verses plenty of times, but the way he presented them just seemed new to me. I think part of it was because of what I had been thinking about after reading some verses in Mark. Let's start out with the verses from Luke.

Luke 16:10-12

10 “If you are faithful in little things, you will be faithful in large ones. But if you are dishonest in little things, you won’t be honest with greater responsibilities. 11 And if you are untrustworthy about worldly wealth, who will trust you with the true riches of heaven? 12 And if you are not faithful with other people’s things, why should you be trusted with things of your own? 

Every time I have ever read these verses I have thought about money or talent. If God gives you a little bit of money, how do you handle it? If God gives you the ability to do something, how do you use it? 

Now let's look at the verses in Mark.

Mark 8:34-38

34 Then, calling the crowd to join his disciples, he said, “If any of you wants to be my follower, you must give up your own way, take up your cross, and follow me. 35 If you try to hang on to your life, you will lose it. But if you give up your life for my sake and for the sake of the Good News, you will save it. 36 And what do you benefit if you gain the whole world but lose your own soul? 37 Is anything worth more than your soul? 38 If anyone is ashamed of me and my message in these adulterous and sinful days, the Son of Man will be ashamed of that person when he returns in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.” 

I read this set of verses first, these are the verses that have been on my mind for probably about a month now. I can't have one foot in the world and one foot in the church and hope that God blesses me fully.  How can I ask God to fully bless me when I am not being fully obedient? I feel like this has been the battle going on inside of me my whole life. I love my job; I love my friends. The world is full of temptation, and you come across a lot of people who don't involve God in their decision-making process. My job is to be a good witness to those people, but if I'm being honest, it's hard to be in Christian witness mode all of the time. After thinking about these two sets of verses my heart is really feeling like it's being pulled in the direction of truth. I have to be all the way in if I want to have a God blessed life. If I want the benefits of having an all-powerful God, then I have to be obedient all of the time. The book of Mark tells me that if I am ashamed of him on earth, he will be ashamed of me when he returns. The book of Luke tells me that if I can't handle a little, why would God give me a lot. Yes, he is talking about money. But he is also talking about how I handle the little parts of being a full-time Christian. I want to be all in, I want to be a full time Christian. I don't want anything I do to be thought of as being ashamed of the gospel. I want to make it a goal of mine to show God that I can be faithful with a little, so he will trust me with more.