Book of Deuteronomy
Choose Life or Death, Blessing or Curse
God followers have a choice in the way we live our lives – the way that leads to life or death, blessing or curse. Sounds so simple in our complicated lives but its true and filled with clarity when you look on the One who is the giver and sustainer of life.
“See, I have set before you today life and good, death and evil. If you obey the commandments of the Lord your God that I command you today, ‘by loving the Lord your God, by walking in His ways, and by keeping His commandments and His statutes and His rules, then you shall live and multiply, and the Lord your God will bless you…'” (Deuteronomy 30:15,16)
A blessed life is filled with the goodness of God, of knowing that God is with you at all times and in all circumstances. He knows the number of our days, delights in blessing us with His best even to the point of sending His only Son, Jesus Christ to pay for our sins – past, present and future – by dying a sacrificial death on the cross that broke the power of sin in our lives.
We not only have the freedom to make a choice between life and death every day, we have been given the power to choose life and blessing over death and curse. Jesus did not leave us stranded but gave us the gift of the Holy Spirit who empowers us choose life and blessing, to live everyday in His resurrected power.
Choose to walk with God today and experience the abundant life through Him!
“Therefore choose life, that you and your offspring may live, loving the Lord your God, obeying His voice and holding fast to Him, for He is your life and length of days…” (Deuteronomy 30:19,20)
Faith to Hear & Do
God’s heart for you and me is to live our lives in such a way that all would go well with us and our family, even to the next generation. He also knows that for us to maintain this position of ‘wellness’ with Him that it requires developing a heart to fear, a reverence toward Him that sincerely motivates us to walk in all His ways.
“Oh that they had such a heart as this always, to fear Me and to keep all my commandments, that it might go well with them and their descendants forever.” (Deuteronomy 5:29)
God was preparing His people to enter into the fulfillment of all His promises connected with entering the promised land. The fulfillment would come with this condition, that they would maintain a faithful relationship with God.
When God blesses us our tendency is to become complacent with His generosity, take His goodness for granted and forget that it was His faithfulness to His promises that brought us into our promise land. He simply asks of us to keep Him first in order to maintain a ‘well lived life’ through every event of life. This is a blessed life.
“Hear…and be careful to do them, that it may go well with you, and that you may multiply greatly, as the Lord, the God of your fathers, has promised you, in a land flowing with milk and honey.” (Deuteronomy 6:3)
loretta j. willis, author 