Keeps God’s Love In the Front of Your Minds

by

Bible Reading:

  • Deuteronomy 6-7
  • Psalm 89
  • Revelation 4

Devotional Thoughts

Why does God have to command his people to love him? What would a marriage or a friendship be like if we were commanded to love the other person? Actually, in a marriage, we ARE commanded to love each other. And, we are also commanded to love those of God’s household. Interesting. Why does God have command us to love?

It’s because love is more than just an emotion or a feeling. Love is a choice that we make to not think about ourselves and instead, to think about someone else! And that is the most un-natural thing that we as fleshly humans will ever have to do.

In the flesh, we only love ourselves! So, how do we develop the habit of resisting our natural tendency (loving and thinking only of self) and choose to yield to the Spirit and love others?

In Deut 6:5-9 God gives the people of Israel an interesting series of commands. It’s almost like God is saying, “I know this is totally against your nature, and this is going to be so foreign to you, you are going to need all the help you can to remember it. So, here’s a little “system” to help you remember. Write them down and post them everywhere! (Bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates…) Then, make it a habit to be talking about them in every situation you are in! (Teach them to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down and when you rise up. Deut 6:5-9)

So, what are the things you need to remember? What truths do you need to write “as frontlets between your eyes?”

For me… Instead of seeing the negatives in people, I need to see them as God’s dearly loved children! That no matter how they are acting, or where their lives aren’t displaying Jesus, they are His masterpiece, and He is going about the work of conforming and perfecting them (Phil 1:6)

Instead of focusing on their deficiencies, I need to build them up in the truths of how God sees them!

What do you need to remember? What system can you put in place to help you keep those truths at the fore front of your mind?

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