Thursday, November 6, 2014

External Commotion

Now what I am commanding you today is not too difficult for you or beyond your reach.  It is not up in heaven, so that you have to ask, ‘Who will ascend…and get it…and proclaim it to us?’  Nor is it beyond the sea, so that you have to ask, ‘Who will cross…to get it…and proclaim it to us?’  No, the word is very near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart…Now choose life, so that you…may love the LORD your God, listen to his voice, and hold fast to him.  For the LORD is your life...” De 30:11-20.
 
Today’s passage is one of the most eloquent and beautiful exhortations in the Bible.  It was spoken by a man who understood that life would crowd in and steal God’s message.  It is a speech that laid out the dangers of being spiritually lazy, depending on others for their fellowship with God.  Moses had been both leader and spiritual intercessor for these people.  He had shown them that fellowship with God led to truth, promise and personal revelation.  Repeatedly they had turned away from the Lord although they had the message in their heart and mind.  They allowed the distractions and earthly callings to elevate their focus above their time with God.  Moses cautioned them ‘But if your heart turns away…and if you are drawn away... you will not live long in the land you are …to enter and possess’ De 30:18.

God has a beautiful plan for each of our lives but He is not going to just drop it from heaven.  Only will we determine His purpose through the dedicated and intentional time we carve out for Him.  Life will always present a landscape of competing worship…those things that we deem our time must go towards.  We must have an inward devotion to God to receive the secret things of the Lord (De 29:29).  We all have a land He wants us to enter, a land where our greatest strengths collide with His greatest power.  Our spiritual impact is determined by our spiritual fellowship with the Father.  No one is going 'to ascend to heaven or cross the sea' for us to determine our future.  It is only through time with the Father and communion with His spirit.  The world will draw us away if we allow it so it is so important to consider Paul’s beautiful words to the Colossians, ‘…set your hearts on things above…Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things.  For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God’ (Colossians 3:1-2).  We can all have the same measure of God in our lives...it is up to us to determine the level of intimacy we share with Him.

I read a powerful statement this morning in my Bible Study, A Woman’s Heart – God’s Dwelling Place, p. 142.  Beth Moore states that we are all to be priests for God with the same calling the priests of the Old Testament had upon their lives.  We are to have ‘internal devotion in the midst of external commotion.’

‘Now choose life…’

No comments: