“If you fully obey the Lord
your God and carefully follow all his commands I give you today, the Lord your
God will set you high above all the nations on earth. All these blessings will
come on you and accompany you if you obey the Lord your God” (Deuteronomy
28:1-2,NIV).
How many of us really make a
determined effort to follow the Lord's command to live a surrendered life?
Perhaps we don't because following Christ means sacrifice. We want to follow
Him, but it means giving up who we are for who He is. It is going to cost us.
Selfishness and pride are two of the first things that must die. Following
Christ also takes up our time and uses our energy. We sometimes make our
Christian walk circumstantial and based on our feelings instead of God's
desires. But if we sacrifice our feelings and follow His will in all
circumstances, God's blessings “will come upon us and accompany us”.
It is God's desire to bless His children who make
a commitment to follow Him. His blessings are His gifts which flow when we
sacrifice our personal desires for His, and live an obedient life. Sacrifice
without obedience has little meaning. Sacrifice is whatever we lose for His
sake, and obedience is whatever we give. Obedience is our offering to Him that
comes when we realize that the sacrifice of ourselves is not about us. It's all
about His love that gave His life for us. He was obedient to death on a cross
for us. How can we not respond in return with an obedient life that praises His
love, and gives up all that is necessary for His sake?
Never live for the sake of
His blessing. Always live for the sake of His love. We must never regard
sacrifice and obedience as a means to earn God's blessings. Then pride enters,
and makes us see God's blessings as a reward for all we have lost and given.
Sacrificing our desires for His desires and living a committed life brings
blessings because of God's love for us—not based on our efforts. His blessings
are an outpouring of who He is. He is the love which gave His life for ours on
Calvary. He is the love that is only completed in us when we give all of who we
are to Him. His blessings flow as a result of who He is, and never because of
anything we have done. “I have come,” Jesus said, “that they may have life, and
have it to the full” (John 10:10b). God wants us to experience the fullness of
our relationship with Him. In living a sacrificially obedient life, that is what
we receive.
In these verses in
Deuteronomy God's blessings are intertwined with our obedience. His direction is
very clear. If we fully obey the Lord our God and carefully follow all His
commands, His blessings will come to us. And His blessings are the very best.
Different from any humanly-inspired gift we might receive, His blessings will
change our very lives. We will learn that sacrificial obedience brings His
abundant life. In giving all of ourselves to Him, we shall receive all that His
chosen for us. His blessings are beyond whatever our human mind might conceive.
They are more than our human heart can hold. They are of Him, divinely-inspired
and given out of the greatest of all love.
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