Lordly Necessity

Deuteronomy 10: 12

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.

First, you can line through the name Israel and write in your name. That is how you should read this verse. Second, please recall that you have to modernize this language. We no longer use the word “fear” the way it was used in this context. A better, more modern word would be revere. You would not go amiss by replacing the word fear with the word love either. God’s first requirement of us is that we love Him. That makes perfect sense doesn’t it. We wouldn’t be part of His family if we didn’t first love Him.

Secondly, we are to walk in all His ways. Selah. Pause and think about that for a moment. What are His ways? What does it mean for us to walk in His ways? Think about a typical day for you. What does that look like? How do you perceive that you do walk as He walks? In what ways do you think your walk and His diverge. I do not think this means walking around preaching all day. I believe it means acting like Him in all of the normal things you do. For example, grocery shopping, pumping gas or being on the job, if God was doing those things, what would it look like? How would He progress through a normal day? Walking in His ways not only means doing the things He would do but also doing every day the way He would do. How are we spending our time? How do we use our words? How do we interact with others? How do we set our priorities and carry out the necessary tasks of life? I would add, are we listening to Him on a minute by minute basis or even on a daily basis so that we can get His direction, His leading so that we can follow in His footsteps?

Love Him! That is the directive. Do we? How do we? Is this a passive verb or is it an action verb? What did the author intend to convey when he wrote that we are to love the Lord, our God?

Finally, we are to serve the Lord with all our heart and all our soul? What does that even mean? First, how do we serve Him? I would suggest that first we probably need to spend some time with Him, ask Him what He would have us do and then listen. Second, it probably has something to do with serving and ministering to His kids. Then the calling upon our lives is to do that thing, whatever it is He shows us, to do that with all our passion, with all our heart, with all our strength. It ends up being the passion of our lives, the driving force.

Our lives are never better than when we are ardently engaged with our divine Father. It is that which will fill you with the greatest joy you can know. Let us, then, endeavor to follow this scripture’s leading. Let’s meditate on it until our spirits understand the meaning of it and then let us pursue the Spirit’s leading with vigor.

Servant Master

Mark 10: 43 – 45

But it is not so among you, but whoever wishes to become great among you shall be your servant; and whoever wishes to become great among you shall be your servant; and whoever wishes to be first among you shall be slave of all. For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many.

Christianity is unlike any other religion. Really it is not a religion at all but rather a relationship with our Lord and God. While we do worship Him, Jesus came to earth not to be served but rather to serve. No other religious figures laid down their lives in order to redeem us. This is the good news of the gospel; that through the shed blood of Jesus, we have been redeemed and reconciled to the Father. Jesus is the greatest servant of all. By becoming least among men, he became the greatest. He came to serve our need. He came to save us. He gave even his life because of his love for us and for the Father. It was through his deep love that he became the servant of all. Now we serve the Father, not of requirement, but out of appreciation, gratitude and love for Him. We happily serve him as dear children though, not as slaves. We humble ourselves before others because he first loved us. The irony is, we humbly serve others not because we are servants nor have been made slaves but rather because Jesus set us free. He freely served us of his own volition. Now we have been set free from all the bondages that held us captive including those of ego and self-promotion. Because we are learning who we are in Christ we have been set free from having to prove something to ourselves or others in this realm. We have been redeemed from the curse and the only debt we own is to love one another.