Wednesday, May 9, 2018

Each And Every Day


And Samuel said to the whole house of Israel, "If you are returning to the LORD with all your hearts, then rid yourselves of the foreign gods and the Ashtoreths and commit yourselves to the LORD and serve him only, and he will deliver you out of the hand of the Philistines.”  1 Samuel 7:3

When I got married, I was convinced in every word that was said in our wedding vows.  To love and cherish.  To have and to hold.  In sicknesses and in health.  Until death do us part.  All that stuff was about Loretta and me.  We didn’t get there overnight.  We had ups and downs, and times where family and my own silliness pulled us apart.  But we always ended back up together.  She stood above all as the best thing that ever happened to me.  I couldn’t say that back when I was going through it with her.  But now, it is crystal clear.  She is worth every fight, argument, disappointment, and tear that we went through to get to today.  And the funny thing is our love grows every day.  This is who we are, and we are committed to making our love for each other better.

When we have a relationship with God, we are bound to a relationship that will continue to grow and have value.  We always think of our relationship with God as at times ‘hot and cold.’  The people of Israel were in their ‘cold’ stretch, but this one lasted for twenty years!  Ouch!  Samuel’s words were to help the Israelites understand that those things that divided them from God were within their control (FYI – Ashtoreths were idols representing the Canaanites goddess Ashtoreth – see https://www.biblestudytools.com/dictionary/ashtoreth/ for more details).  Shortly after following Samuel’s instruction, God defeats the Philistines when they attempted to attack Israel.  When reading the chapter, it should serve as a reminder of our commitment to God.  If we are too proud or focused on things that detract from Him or His will for our lives, we are destined to be in the cold stretch like Israel.  However if we remove those obstacles that could separate us from Him, we will have our great and awesome defender who will move mountains and protect us from harm.  We must ask ourselves, “Why is this so easy to understand and yet so hard to attain?”  The commitments that we have in our lives range from ‘what shirt to where’ to ‘do I want to be saved.’  How difficult the commitment is to God boils down to one thing: Who are you committed to?  Are you committed to the Lord, or are you committed to yourself?  Only you can answer that question, and it is only you who can make the decision.  Any great relationship has struggles.  Whether it gets repetitive or we see something more exciting or new, we can get distracted.  But if we focus on what matters to God, we will always find His faithfulness reassuring and His wisdom filled with something new.

God is constant.  Yes, there will be times where we do not make sense of what He wants from us, and we may stray away.  But whether it be for a day, a month, or even years, He is always there.  Waiting.  Loving. Saying to you as Jesus said to disciples, “If any of you wants to be my follower, you must give up your own way, take up your cross, and follow me.  (Matthew 16:24b)  Let us remove those things that inhibit our connectivity to our one true God.  What obstacles inhibit your connection with God?  How will you focus on what God wants above what you want?  My prayer is we recognize our relationship with God, and commit to growing our love for Him each and every day.

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