March 7

Read Deut 28 to 30

Deut. 30:15-20 See, I set before you today life and prosperity, death and destruction. 16For I command you today to love the Lord your God, to walk in his ways, and to keep his commands, decrees and laws; then you will live and increase, and the Lord your God will bless you in the land you are entering to possess. ........ 19This day I call heaven and earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live

What is with God? He has to tell people to love him and follow his ways, over and over again? What kind of god commands people to love and praise him?
We all know people with inferiority complexes that have to have people around them constantly telling them how many people love them. We usually think there is something wrong with people like that. So how about our God? Is our God like the wicked queen in Snow White, who stood before the mirror and said, “Mirror, mirror the wall, who is fairest of us all?”
It that the kind of God we have? If so, I seriously suggest you stop your Bible reading today and join a 1960’s hippie commune. There are still a few up in Vermont.

Consider for a moment.... have you ever seen a great movie, read a fantastic book or visited a wonderful vacation spot? What do you instinctively do when you finish that experience? You tell everyone what you have just experienced. You don’t have to tell a young man to praise the virtues of his girlfriend. That’s doing what comes naturally. You don’t have to tell a hiker to praise the countryside or a sailor to praise the sea. People always praise what they enjoy.

What God is telling us to do here is to choose to enjoy him. You can’t force anyone to love anyone else. Love is a choice. And we have the opportunity to choose to love and enjoy our God. When we do that we will experience life and prosperity.

God is the only person who will satisfy the longing and thirst of our souls. Nothing on this planet can take his place.
William Temple, archbishop of Canterbury (1942-1944) said this:
“Worship is the submission of all of our nature to God. It is the quickening of conscience by His holiness, nourishment of mind by His truth, purifying of imagination by His beauty, opening of the heart to His love, and submission of will to His purpose. And all this gathered up in adoration is the greatest of human expressions of which we are capable.”
This is where life is found…. Submitting to, quickening by, purifying of, opening to and adoring of God.
St. Augustine: Thou hast made us for Thyself and the heart of man is restless until it finds rest in Thee.

Francis Schaeffer: Man, made in the image of God, has a purpose ‑ to be in relationship to God, who is there.
Man forgets his purpose and thus he forgets who he is and what life means.

Choose life today.... choose to love God with all your heart. You will find your purpose on earth.