Hosea 12:9 But I am the Lord your God, ever since the land of Egypt; I will again make you dwell in tents, as in the days of the appointed feast.

i read another devotional this morning and this was the scripture. i have been meaning to look up just such scripture because a few weeks ago i got some good advice from a friend/teacher. he said, "if you don't know where you are with God, or you are confused about what step to take, go back to the last time you know you were hearing Him and following His will for your life. do whatever you were doing at that time, and wait to hear from Him." sometimes we don't want to go backwards, but sometiimes this is the only way we can be sure we are obeying the Lord. sometimes it is His plan to take us backwards, so that we can hear Him and be back in relationship with Him the way He wants us to be. He desires to really be the Lord of our lives. going backwards might be the only way to put Him first.

for some reason the last couple days i have been thinking about heaven. maybe b/c i just read "90 Minutes in Heaven" by Don Piper. of course, you figured already, that i DO believe in heaven. contrary to what some people probably think, i believe it is a rational perspective: i believe there must be a point to this life....

the very fact of life (human beings) begs questions about death. what comes next? is there a heaven? assuming you believe there is a heaven, how do you get there? what makes you good enough? who is the judge?

what i love about the gospel (the Bible) is that it answers just such questions, albeit, you might have to take a step of faith to believe the answers.

John 3:16 For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.

so how do we show the world of our belief? (because otherwise, what is the point and... are we really believers?)

Romans 10:9 If you use your mouth to say (audible confession), "Jesus is Lord," and if you believe in your heart that God raised Jesus from the dead, you will be saved.

so... there is nothing that makes us good enough. there is no amount of works we can do to get us to heaven.

Romans 3:10 There is no one who always does what is right, not even one.

and... God judges our hearts. did we really know Him in the first place? did we believe in what His son Jesus did for us on the cross?

2 Corinthians 5:10 because we must all stand before Christ to be judged. Each of us will receive what we should get--good or bad--for the things we did in the earthly body.

Romans 2:2 God judges those who do wrong things, and we know that His judging is right.

Deuteronomy 30:1 When all these blessings and curses I have described happen to you, and the Lord your God has sent you away to other nations, think about these things (the things we know, mentioned in the last paragraph of chapter 29). 2 Then you and your children will return to the Lord your God, and you will obey him with your whole being in everything I am commanding you today. 3 Then the Lord your God will give you back your freedom. He will feel sorry for you, and He will bring you back again from the nations where he scattered you.

i am loving deuteronomy in a way i can't even begin to put words to. i love comparing myself to the Israelites and knowing that they disobeyed God, but He loved them so much, that He kept bringing them back to Himself. and... He loved us that much too. He made a way for us to be reconciled to Him through Jesus. He gave us back our freedom. and talk about complexity: we, as people, are scattered from one another. we are spread all over the earth, and the Lord gets us back to where He wants us. then, in addition, we have all this "scatteredness" going on within us and God gets us back on track with that too.

FREEDOM: i was thinking about the idea of being free within the confines of God's Word (His Rules, if you will). the idea itself seems backwards. free within a set of rules? doesn't make much sense. but you only need try it out and you will see what i mean. i truly don't worry about what others think of me because i am not worried about this life, but i think about the life ahead, in eternity with my Father in heaven. and i think about the Rules... they are things like: treat your neighbor as yourself, love the one and only God, submit to your husband and be his helper, train up your children to know these things. wow... they don't really seem like hard things to do, especially if i want to live a life of LOVE and i want to be treated with respect and dignity myself. i just have to LOVE others and treat them with respect and dignity. the "Rules" mean a life of freedom from regret, freedom from hurting others, freedom from bad marriages and divorce. Freedom begins with belief and faith, in God and in His Son, Jesus. Freedom means figuring out what the "Rules" are, so that i can live by them, and then see their fruits in my life. i know i do not follow the rules perfectly, consistently, or even well sometimes. but i want to, and i love the reminders in deuteronomy, that God wants to bring us back to that freedom within His love for us, because He loves us and we are His chosen people

Deuteronomy 27:9 The Moses and the Levites who were priests spoke to all Israel and said, "Be quiet, Israel. Listen! Today you have become the people of the Lord your God. 10 Obey the Lord your God, and keep his commands and laws that I give you today."

i read this last night during our nightly reading. and i have not been able to get it out of my head. again, how like Israel are we? the day of our own salvation is just like the day Israel became the Lord's own people. on that very day we are new creations, dearly loved and honored by our God. and on that day, we should start obeying His Word, His commands. Moses said obey the Lord your God TODAY. we should show the world that we are children of God. but... we all know that in a new Christian there is not instant change (and actually, there is not instant change in an old Christian either). Israel never got it right, what makes us think we can do it any better? we are fallible, human. we are made in God's image, but we are not god, and so, we cannot be perfect and without sin. we can choose to be apart from Him or we can choose to draw near to Him. most of the time the choice is not easy, as was true for the Israelites. they had to follow all sorts of rules and make all kinds of crazy sacrifices. and the choice is still not easy today, in a society that does not value the Lord, ethical decisions, or even value people the way God does. His standards are so much higher and better and yet, we choose the world, from which we can never truly be satisfied. so the question is... what am i doing today to draw near to God, to know Him, to show the world that i am obeying His commands to me and that i LOVE Him with all my heart, mind, soul, and strength?

Deuteronomy 7:23 But the Lord your God will hand those nations over to you, confusing them until they are destroyed. 24 The Lord will help you defeat their kings, and the world will forget who they were. No one will be able to stop you; you will destroy them all.

i have read deuteronomy before. but this time, i think i am paying attention. you know how you read stuff sometimes, and you have to go back and reread because something just did not stick? well, it has taken a few years, but i am reading this great book again. God is telling His people, the Israelites, His commands again because He wants them to understand how important they are. it is not as redundant as i thought it might be. it is like the first few chapters of this book are a father's pleading to His children to listen to His good instruction, to obey Him because He DOES actually know what He is doing, and because He has brought them through hardship and out of slavery before. it is how i think i should be praying to Him for the good of my own children.

amazing how much we are like the Israelites huh? God brought me out of my own Egypt and i continually question Him and wonder what more He will do for me, just like His chosen people did years ago. but... when we give our lives over to Him and allow Him to part our Red Seas we will see miracles in our own lives. we can be delivered from all kinds of weaknesses, from the things we hold as idols in our lives, from sickness, from addiction or just plain bad decision-making. i know i was. i have to admit, when i think of being delivered, so many people come to my mind. but... i have to backtrack, because i am the first one in my life who needs that deliverance. the Lord keeps breaking me down and showing me that i have to give over EVERYTHING to Him so that He can take care of all my needs. He will confuse my "nations and kings" (things in my life that are bad) until i have overcome them. He will defeat the enemy for me and maybe one day people from my past, present, and future will look at me and only see the person i have become in Christ and not the old person i was before.

Romans 1:21 They knew God, but they did not give glory to God or thank him. Their thinking became uselss. Their foolish minds were filled with darkness. 22 They said they were wise, but they became fools. 23 They traded the glory of God who lives forever for the worship of idols made to look like earthly people, birds, animals, and snakes.

how often do we do this very thing? we make so many things in our lives out to be more important than seeking and knowing the Lord. i put so many things before Him: my fam, cleaning my house, other books, scrapbooking. i find that i want to spend time with Him, but there are so many other things i enjoy that i also want to do (or just need to do). but... i need to let go of these things. my pastor says that praying will actually save you time. and i know this is true because i have already covered my day and many of the situations and people i will face in prayer and blessings. the Lord works in your days when you call on Him. it is like He is proactive for you when you have already given things over to Him. but He cannot do so if we put a bunch of things before Him. sometimes we don't want to seek out the Lord or we feel apathetic about Him. but we must strive on toward that relationship with Him, reminding ourselves how important it is to worship Him, giving Him the glory for where we are at, the troubles we have come through and all the blessings in our lives.

Matthew 10:29 Two sparrows cost only a penny, but not even one of them can die without your Father's knowing it. 30 God even knows how many hairs are on your head. 21 So don't be afraid. You are worth much more than sparrows.


Luke 15: 31 The father said to him, "Son, you are always with me, and all that I have is yours. 32 We had to celebrate and be happy because your brother was dead, but now he is alive. He was lost, but now he is found."


in class last week we talked a moment about prodigals, those people who either are getting saved for the first time or those who have distanced themselves from God and come back to Him. God's heart aches for these in His desire to have them know Him. His heart breaks every time one of us makes a choice that takes us further from Him. He sent His Son to die on a cross so that we could be reconciled to Him. He knows how many hairs are on our heads, even for those who do not know Him. He knows every detail. and He wants us to choose right: choose to live for Him, choose to repent of our sins, choose to know Him for the first time. i have prayed that i would have the eyes to see people as God sees them: with the love and compassion of Christ. there are people in my life for whom i ache that they will know the Lord, intimately and personally know Him and believe in the cross. and there are people in my life for whom i ache that they will come back to Him and follow His ways. imagine: He aches for them 100 times more than i do. if i am crying tears for them, then i can be sure the Lord is as well. His love is a greater gift than we can ever imagine. and He wants to give it all to us.