Deuteronomy 11:22(NLT)
“Be careful to obey all these commands I am giving you. Show love to the LORD your God by walking in his ways and holding tightly to him.”
As a mother, you want to make sure that you provide enough love, guidance, and support for your children so that when they become mature, they won’t stray too far from what you taught them. This is the kind of image that comes to my mind when I read scriptures like Deuteronomy 11:22. God speaks so plainly—He wants us to get life right so that we don’t have to endure the hiccups that await us if we don’t walk in His ways. He tells us to hold tightly to His ways, and this requires us to walk in His love.
Just as we have a loving Heavenly Father, we also have an enemy that is dastardly evil and wants to trap us any chance he gets. In John 8:44(NLT), Jesus Christ spoke very sternly and direct to those people that wanted to cause him harm. He said, “For you are the children of your father the devil, and you love to do the evil things he does. He was a murderer from the beginning. He has always hated the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, it is consistent with his character; for he is a liar and the father of lies.” There are many people that do not know the Lord Jesus Christ and haven’t asked him for a pardon of their sins. Some of these individuals are children of satan, and he will use them in his plots against us. They become full of his demonic influence. Through them, the enemy lurks around, watching to see if we will forget the Words of our Father. Waiting to steal from us, the enemy seeks to destroy what we’ve work so hard to achieve.
Our Heavenly Father loves us so much. He wants to protect us and has given us His Word so that we are safe and protected from the evil plots and tricks of the devil. But we must be ever aware that to remain under God’s covering, we must keep our hearts and minds focused on the Lord Jesus Christ. God told His people in Deuteronomy 11:26-28(NLT), “26 Look, today I am giving you the choice between a blessing and a curse! 27 You will be blessed if you obey the commands of the LORD your God that I am giving you today. 28 But you will be cursed if you reject the commands of the LORD your God and turn away from him and worship gods you have not known before.”
God has given us all free-will. We always have choices. We can either choose to love God’s way and be blessed, or we can make the choice to love the world, which is the devil’s territory, and let the world influence our behavior, thoughts, and actions. The world we now live in is riddled with fear, lust, envy, jealousy and pain, all symptoms of a cursed life. It doesn’t take much to see how a life without God and His love will look. Our Almighty God tells us, “you can love me and be blessed, or you can love the devil and be cursed!” I’m committed to make the obvious, most common-sense, right choice and that’s to be blessed. I pray that you, too, will always make this choice.
We demonstrate the love for God by being obedient to His instructions in His Word. To love God is to live free. He tells us in Romans 12:1-2 that through His mercy we can present our entire beings to Him as a living, holy, and acceptable sacrifice. Doing this is the very least we can do for all that He has done for us. He commands us not to make the choice of being transformed by the cultures, traditions, and societies of the world. We are to renew our minds to His matchless, extraordinary Word, so that when confronted by any obstacle or issue in life, we will choose love and come out on the winning side.■
Scripture quotations marked (NLT) are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved.
“The Obvious Choice” written by Kim Times, edited by Reverend Fran Mack for Sundie Morning Sistas ©2019. All rights reserved. All done to the glory of God through Jesus Christ, our Lord! SMS is dedicated to inspiring and encouraging Christian Women through the Word of God.