Love We Can Trust

Perhaps the most painful statement a person can hear is, “I don’t love you anymore.” Those words end relationships, break hearts, and shatter dreams. Often, people who have been betrayed guard themselves against future pain by deciding not to trust anyone’s love again. That settled conviction may even include the love of God.

The remarkable thing about God’s love for us is His promise that it will never end. The prophet Jeremiah experienced devastating circumstances that left him emotionally depleted (Lam. 3:13-20). His own people rejected his repeated calls to respond to God’s love and follow Him. At a low point, Jeremiah said, “My strength and my hope have perished from the Lord” (v.18).

Yet, in his darkest hour Jeremiah considered God’s unfailing love and wrote, “Through the Lord’s mercies we are not consumed, because His compassions fail not. They are new every morning; great is Your faithfulness. ‘The Lord is my portion,’ says my soul, ‘therefore I hope in Him!’” (Lam. 3:22-24). A person may vow to love us forever yet fail to keep that promise, but God’s love remains steadfast and sure. “He is the One who goes with you. He will not leave you nor forsake you” (Deut. 31:6). That’s a love we can trust.

O Love that wilt not let me go I rest my weary soul in Thee; I give Thee back the life I owe, That in Thine ocean depths its flow May richer, fuller be. —Matheson

God’s love never fails.

http://odb.org/2012/10/23/love-we-can-trust/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+odb%2Ffeed+%28Our+Daily+Bread%29

Eat, Love, Pray

“You will have plenty to eat, until you are full, and you will praise the name of the Lord your God, who has worked wonders for you; never again will my people be shamed.” — Joel 2:26

The prophet Joel says:  “You will have plenty to eat, until you are full and you will praise the name of the Lord your God . . .” This is a direct paraphrase of Deuteronomy 8:10, which states:  “When you have eaten and are satisfied,praise the Lordyour God for the good land he has given you.” In both places, the message is that earth’s bounty is a blessing from God and we should recognize that with gratefulness.

However, the Torah worries that instead of being grateful, we will become forgetful. Just two verses later we read, “Otherwise, when you eat and are satisfied, when you build fine houses and settle down, and when your herds and flocks grow large and your silver and gold increase and all you have is multiplied, then your heart will become proud and you will forget the Lord your God . . .” (Deuteronomy 8:12–14). 

How ironic! Just when we should be the most thankful, we are the least grateful. Instead of encouraging us to thank God, our many blessings lead us away from Him. It seems that when we are hungry and needy, we naturally turn toward God. But once He has satisfied our needs, we no longer need Him.

The saying goes, “you should remember who butters your bread,” but the Torah teaches us that man’s nature is to forget who gave him his bread in the first place.

This is why the Torah encourages us to make blessings not just before we eat but after we are satisfied as well. Deuteronomy 8:10 is the source for the Jewish practice of reciting a grace after meals. In doing so, we combat our human nature to forget who satisfied our needs once they are taken care of.  We take extra care to remember that our satisfaction – in all areas of our lives – is a direct blessing from God.

If the Scripture’s encouragement is not enough to convince us to thank God once we are satisfied, then history should be. The prophets remind us repeatedly that every time the children of Israel took their blessings for granted, they lost them. Every time they forgot about God, He appeared to forget about them.

We can understand Joel’s verse this way:  “You will have plenty to eat . . . and you will praise the name of the LORD . . .” Then, because you paused to say thank you, “never again will my people be shamed.” When we are thankful for our blessings, we become worthy of keeping them.

Don’t wait until your blessings are gone to appreciate them. We live in a time of unprecedented abundance. We dare not squander the opportunity to be grateful.

http://www.holylandmoments.org/devotionals/eat-love-pray

Tozer Devotional-Living Love

Living Love

Love for Christ is a love of willing as well as a love of feeling, and it is psychologically impossible to love Him adequately unless we will to obey His words. In seeking to learn whether we truly love our Lord we must be careful to apply His own test. False tests can only lead to false conclusions as false signs on the highway lead to wrong destinations. The Lord made it plain enough, but with our genius for getting mixed up we have lost sight of the markers. I think if we would turn for a while from finespun theological speculations about grace and faith and humbly read the New Testament with a mind to obey what we see there, we would easily find ourselves and know for certain the answer to the question that troubled our fathers and should trouble us: Do we love the Lord or no?

http://www.cmalliance.org/devotions/tozer?id=632

Two Lessons Learned

Afew weeks after writing an Our Daily Bread article about the importance of obeying the law, I set out on an 850-mile trip—determined to stay within the posted speed limit. While driving out of a small town in New Mexico, I became more occupied with unwrapping a sandwich than with watching the road signs, and I got a speeding ticket. My first lesson that day was that not paying attention costs the same as deliberate disregard for the law. And I still had 700 miles to go!

My second lesson was that our resolve will always be tested. I thought of Moses’ words to God’s people as they prepared to enter the Promised Land: “You shall remember that the Lord your God led you all the way these forty years in the wilderness, to humble you and test you, to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep His commandments or not” (Deut. 8:2).

Pastor and author Eugene Peterson called the process of following Christ “a long obedience in the same direction.” Every resolution to begin to obey must be followed by many decisions to continue.

God gave me a humbling reminder of how vital it is to keep my heart set on obeying Him—and to pay attention along the way.

Thou who hast freely given Thine all in all for me, Claim this life for Thine own to be used, My Savior, every moment for Thee. —Christiansen

To love God is to obey God.

http://odb.org/2012/07/14/two-lessons-learned/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+odb%2Ffeed+%28Our+Daily+Bread%29

Eternal Revelation

“Count off seven weeks from the time you begin to put the sickle to the standing grain. Then celebrate the Festival of Weeks to the LORD your God by giving a freewill offering in proportion to the blessings the LORD your God has given you.”— Deuteronomy 16:9–10

Isn’t it strange that the Bible gives us the date of every single holiday on the calendar except for one? And it’s the holiday that celebrates one of the most important events in human history! The Festival of Weeks, Shavuot or Pentecost, is associated with the giving of the Torah and the revelation of God at Mount Sinai, and yet neither the date of revelation, nor the precise date of the holiday is written in the Scriptures.

All we are told is that the festival occurs seven weeks from the time that we “put the sickle to the standing grain.” In addition, no one knows for sure where this momentous event occurred. Different theories abound, but God has made it so that no one can point to the precise location of Mount Sinai with complete certainty. All we know is that this great event happened somewhere, in the middle of nowhere, sometime in spring.

Why all the vagueness?

What we don’t know tells us a lot. The details that are absent from the story of the revelation point to a profound truth about the Torah:  it is absolutely and unequivocally eternal. There is no date given because the Word of God is beyond time. It was, is, and always will be true. There is no time period, no season, and not even a single day during which the words of the Bible are not binding.

The location of the revelation is unknown because God’s Word is also beyond space. It is not confined to any single location. It holds true in every corner of the earth and is accessible no matter where you may be on the planet. By deliberately leaving us without the exact knowledge of where and when revelation took place, God is telling us that exactly where and when are irrelevant.

We can also learn from the only piece of information that we are given. What we do know is that the Torah was given in the desert. Had the Torah been given in a lush, bountiful land, we could have argued that keeping it was dependent upon easy circumstances. The Torah was given in a desert, a place known for harsh conditions and scarcity, in order to teach us that there are no conditions under which God’s Word does not apply.

No matter where you are or what your circumstances may be, God has a message for you right now.  Pick up the Scriptures and study them daily. You will find that in some small way, the great revelation of long ago is still occurring today.

http://www.holylandmoments.org/devotionals/eternal-revelation

Don’t Forget

“Be careful that you do not forget the LORD, who brought you out of Egypt.” Deuteronomy 6:12

We all have little slips in our memory once in a while, right? I love the story about the guy who decided to do something about his increasing forgetfulness. This poor chap decided to attend a seminar on how to increase his ability to remember things. And, to his great delight, the seminar worked! A few weeks later he sat in his living room, chatting with a friend about his newly improved recall ability.

“You won’t believe it,” he gushed, “This memory seminar really has helped me remember things better. I have a whole new lease on life!”

“That’s great,” his friend replied. “How does it work?”

“Well, you simply think of a common object that helps you build a link to whatever you need to remember. If you can remember the common object, then you’ll remember the other object.”

“Wow!” said his friend. “You know, to be honest, my memory’s slipping a little. What’s the name of the seminar? I think I might sign up for it.”

“Okay,” the guy replied. “Let’s see, think of a flower with red petals . . . long stem . . .  thorns . . .  rose.” Then he yelled to his wife in the next room, “Hey, Rose, what was the name of that seminar I went to?”

In Deuteronomy 6:12, Moses is talking to the Israelites about the danger of memory loss when it comes to forgetting God. God’s people were standing on the edge of the Promised Land, ready to enter a land with great cities they did not build, houses full of good things they did not fill, and vast and lush vineyards they didn’t plant. And, as good as the prospect of all this prosperity was, there was a danger lurking under the blessing. Moses knew that in good times it’s easy to forget God. The people were in danger of forgetting that it was God who had given them this land flowing with milk and honey; forgetting that it was God who went before them in each battle; forgetting, in fact, that it was only through God’s gracious choice of them as His people that they were enjoying the blessings of their new home and country. And, when we forget God, we become unthankful, proud, and self-sufficient—the kinds of things that are offensive to the Giver of every good and perfect gift.

So the solution for Israel—and for that matter, for us—is keeping God in mind! The book of Deuteronomy is actually a memory seminar about God’s goodness to His people. Moses reminds the Israelites of the law that was given on Mount Sinai. He tracks the Israelites back over the ways God miraculously provided for them—battles won, food given, shoes that didn’t wear out—the list of God’s providing work is long.

So, here’s the lesson. Beware! When God is abundantly good to us we are in great danger. We are in danger because in good times it’s easy to forget God. It’s easy to be so consumed with the gifts that we forget the Giver! And if we do that, we end up worshiping the blessings and not the One who in His amazing grace has blessed us.

The benefit of keeping God in mind is that it keeps our hearts grateful, appropriately humble, and delighted in our God for His goodness to us. Believe me, delighting in Him beats being consumed by the stuff that He has given us.

Memory lapses in our daily routines may be normal for us. But remembering God’s goodness in our lives is something we can’t afford to forget!

YOUR JOURNEY…

• Take some time to write out what God has done for you. Let it be an exercise in remembering His goodness and grace in your life!
• While we can rejoice in the fact that God forgives and forgets the sins that we confess before Him, it’s sometimes helpful for us to remember just how much He has forgiven us. We are, as Paul said, examples of God’s “unlimited patience” (1 Timothy 1:16).
• How does remembering what God has done for you personally affect the way that you will live your life today?

http://getmorestrength.org/daily/dont-forget/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+GetMoreStrength+%28Strength+For+The+Journey%29

Becoming True Servants of God

“After these things, Joshua son of Nun, the servant of the Lord, died at the age of a hundred and ten.” — (Joshua 24:29)

Two of the first and greatest leaders of the Jewish Nation, Moses and Joshua, before their death, earned the honorific of “Eved Hashem,” the servant of God. In Deuteronomy 34:5, we read, “And Moses the servant of the Lord died there in Moab, as the Lord had said.” And in the last chapter of Joshua, we read again, “After these things, Joshua son of Nun, the servant of the Lord, died at the age of one hundred and ten years” (Joshua 24:29)

Throughout their lives, both Moses and Joshua had earned many titles from God, but never servant of God, until the very end of their lives. The rabbis tell us that this title represents the highest level of attachment to God. This raises all sorts of questions: How can a servant represent the highest attachment to a king? Isn’t a wife, or surely a son, closer in relationship to a king? And why does God only bestow this title toward the twilight of these leaders’ lives?

We need to analyze the relationship of a servant to his master in the context of our relationship with the All-Mighty. True, a servant lives at the behest of the master. His time is not his own, his actions serve merely an extension of his master, but we must see this in a different light.

Because the servant lives as an extension of his master, he is privy to see his master at times when others cannot. A servant is with the master from the time he gets up to when he goes to bed. He sees the master at his lowest and at his times of frustration, whereas a son cannot always see these things.

In that sense, a servant is closest to God because of the access the job provides. Furthermore, in the context of God, to be referred to as a servant signifies that all one’s actions represent God, from the most mundane action of eating cereal to the more lofty actions of praying. All are done in service to God. This is why only in the context of their death, in the context of true humility, can either Moses or Joshua reach this distinction as a true servant of God.

Throughout life, we learn how to balance independence from and dependence on God, but it is only in the later stages of life that we can see, with the clarity of hindsight and humility that everything truly was for and from God.

The challenge is to be able to live with this mindset throughout our lives. To realize that ultimately we strive to be nothing but servants of God —close enough to God that we can feel intimate with him and humble enough to realize that all flows from him.

http://www.holylandmoments.org/devotionals/becoming-true-servants-of-god

Cultivating Independence

“Be strong and courageous, because you will lead these people to inherit the land I swore to their ancestors to give them.” — Joshua 1:6

In the opening chapter of Joshua, with the death of Moses still fresh in the minds of the people, God speaks to Joshua for the first time as the new leader. God does so to reinforce the promises he made to Moses. Interestingly, within a span of eight verses, within this one speech, God tells Joshua “Chazak V’Ematz” three times.

The first time occurs in verse six, “Be strong and courageous, because you will lead these people to inherit the land I swore to their ancestors to give them.” And two more times after that in verses 7 and 9.

Franz Rosenzweig and Martin Buber, two leading Jewish thinkers in the early 20th century, described this literary tool as a leitmotif (a recurring theme), but we always must ask, to what purpose? Why does God use these exact words, and why does He repeat them with such great frequency?

For the answer, we must look a few pages back in the Bible to when Moses transferred his mantle of power to Joshua. There, we find that Moses uses the same words when speaking to Joshua, “Chazak V’Ematz,” “be strong and courageous” (Deuteronomy 31:6–7). In a simple sense, God’s repetition of this phrase serves as a sort of code to convey that despite the death of the great Moses, God will be with Joshua the same way He was with Moses.

But I think there is more to realize. Often in life, we lose our stability, our grounding, whether due to the death of someone close, or the loss of trust in a mentor, or a blow to a belief; we all at one time or another need to confront faith on our own and grow independent of intermediaries, especially in our relationship with God.

To us God says, despite the hardships that we face, despite the losses that we suffer, Chazak V’ematz, be strong and courageous!

http://www.holylandmoments.org/

Side By Side

In my family scrapbook is a picture of my daughter at age 4 working next to me, using a toy hammer to repair the siding on the house. Side by side we worked that day; she imitated my every action, absolutely convinced that she too was fixing the house. Rarely have I enjoyed a chore more. In the picture, it’s obvious that she’s enjoying it too.

That photo reminds me that our children mimic most of what they see in us—words and deeds. They also form their images of God from the images they have of us as parents. If we’re stern and unmerciful, they’re likely to see God that way too. If we’re distant and cold, so God will seem to them as well. It is one of our most important duties as parents to help our children see God clearly, especially the unconditional nature of His love.

I can imagine the family scrapbook of my relationship with God having a similar picture. I’m learning from Him how to live life, how to love, and how to make it a permanent part of my being. He then teaches me how to teach others (Deut. 6:1-7).

May the Lord grant us an understanding of Him and the wisdom to pass it on.

We must teach our children clearly
What is right and what is wrong;
Live before them an example—
Godly, righteous, pure, and strong. —Fitzhugh

To teach your children well, let God teach you.

http://odb.org/2012/02/17/side-by-side/