Deuteronomy 10: 12-13
And now, Israel, what does the Lord your God require from you, but to fear the Lord your God, to walk in all His ways and love Him, and to serve the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and to keep the Lord's commandments and His statutes which I am commanding you today for your own good?
For our own good! God wants to bless us with good. He has designed into this Earth everything everybody will ever need to enjoy an abundance of prosperity, if only we would respect God as God and obey what He tells us to do.
No one who buys a new car has a problem with obeying what the book in the glove-box says to do, concerning care of the vehicle. It only makes sense to follow the manufacturer's instructions so that this automobile will give you good service for the life of the vehicle.
Our Manufacturer has also given us His instructions to follow. And when we live our lives according to His ways, the result will also be that our lives will give us many years of good living.
But this World around us, our enemy the devil, and our own flesh all contrive to deceive us into thinking contrary to God's ways (Ephesians 2:1-3). Even our own hearts lie to us (Jeremiah 17:9). So I can't even trust my own thinking or logic.
I must consult my Maker's Book for instructions on how to live. I must let Him love me with His unmatched, eternal, unlimited, and unconditional Love; I must believe what He says about me so I can love myself; I must love Him back above all else; and I must display His love in all my relationships and dealings with others.
Then I will be obeying all the laws He gave us to guide us (Matthew 22:37-40).
This is everything God wants of us. Just to recognize Who He is, to know Him, to love Him back, and to love our neighbor as we love ourselves.
Simple, but not easy.
To live above with saints we love,
O won't that be glory!
But to live below with saints we know,
Well, that's a different story!
So we need God's Holy Spirit living in us, making our dead spirit alive, and teaching us God's Truth as we read and study His Word. So we can relate to those we are related to, and to deal with those we have dealings with, in Love.
Even so, come, Lord Jesus!
