“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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