Deuteronomy 12-15 = today's thought

Deuteronomy 12-15 = today's thought

 

God wants His people to be faithful, he wants them to succeed, he wants a right relationship with them.  He has instructed Moses to communicate His expectations.  So Moses continues on in his preparations of the people.  As you look over these last several chapters we are covering a lot of ground.  God knows how easily the people turn from following Him, he has seen their fickle hearts while wandering the last 40 years and he is leaving little room for misunderstanding of His expectations.  The specificity of some of these instructions is interesting, God is listing specific animals that are clean and unclean, specific forms of giving, specific instructions when overtaking their enemies.  Not general concepts but specific instructions.  He is a God who is most definitely involved in the details.  And if God is the same God today, and we know that he is, how have we come so far from specifically following God’s instruction.  As I think about the way we live our lives we often live our lives and our faith in the general realm and not in detailed intentional following.  We generally live as a Christian should live, but how is that evidenced different than just being good.  We may read the word, pray, etc… but is that study changing us, and is that change leading to action, and does our action communicate who Christ is to others.  With tens of millions of people professing to be followers of Christ, how come society doesn’t see us more distinctly different than they are.  We have concerned ourselves so much with being accessible we have in many ways made our beliefs irrelevant.  God was specific so his people would stand out.  He abhorred the following of other Gods, to the point he required in many circumstances their utter annihilation.  Moses instructions in chapters 12 and 13 to the Israelites were to fully destroy these places that worshiped false gods and to keep nothing that could lead them to be curious or interested in other Gods.  How different is that from the church today,  where tolerance is touted as enlightenment. Not only do we allow room for other gods, work, wealth, family, false gods, cults, false teaching, etc….we have made them part of our belief system in many ways, we even have a hard time agreeing much of the basics.  How come we are separated by the trivial rather than united around the core.  God’s desire for our lives is pretty specific,  He has a desire for us to know Him, seek Him, worship Him, share him with others.  And yet the things we concern ourselves with most of our days are not these things, but rather the things that he told us not to be concerned with, food, shelter, etc….  What would happen if tens of millions of people stopped focusing on our mortgages, our careers, our status, and all focused on sharing Christ.  It sounds ridiculous because it is so far from where we currently are, but isn’t it really who we are supposed to be and what we were created to do.  We will never arrive at the relationship we were created to have with God if we never set out on the journey.

 

Have a great day.

Rob