Tag: Following God

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Deuteronomy Devotionals

Who are you following?

Following God

I can no longer act as your leader…The LORD your God is the one who will cross ahead of you. (Deuteronomy 31:2-3)

Who is your faith dependent on? Your pastor? Your friends? Other people in the church?

There’s going to come a time when they can no longer be there for you. What happens then?

My hope is that you would set your eyes fully on God and follow him. That you would be strong and courageous and follow wherever he leads.

More importantly, that’s what God desires for you.

So let’s start learning how to do that now.

To feed ourselves spiritually.

To pray.

To listen to God’s voice.

To fear God.

And to obey him.

How about you? Are you learning those things now?

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Numbers Devotionals

Lead your heart

Cornerstone of apartment. The Lord our God is One Lord.

Speak to the Israelites and tell them that throughout their generations they are to make tassels for the corners of their garments, and put a blue cord on the tassel at each corner.

These will serve as tassels for you to look at, so that you may remember all the Lord’s commands and obey them and not prostitute yourselves by following your own heart and your own eyes.

This way you will remember and obey all my commands and be holy to your God.

I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt to be your God; I am the Lord your God. (Numbers 15:38-41)

Last year at my church, we talked about not following our hearts, but rather leading our hearts to follow God.

That’s not a new idea.

Moses told the Israelites the same thing. “Don’t just follow your hearts, setting them on the things you see, and so prostitute yourself. Lead your hearts to follow God and his ways.”

Why? Because God had first loved them. He had saved them from slavery in Egypt and made them his people.

And so now, they were to be holy to him.

In the same way, God first loved us, setting us free from slavery to Satan’s kingdom.

We are God’s beloved people now, and we are to be holy to him, not prostituting ourselves to sin again.

But how do we lead our hearts?

God gave the Israelites one way.

He told them to make a tassel with a blue cord attached to each corner of their garments. Every time they put on their clothes, they were to remember to lead their hearts to follow God.

We don’t need to do that, but it is good to find ways to remind ourselves whose we are and who we are to follow.

Recently, someone at my church moved into a new apartment, and he showed me a picture of its cornerstone. It says, “The LORD our God is one LORD.” (Deuteronomy 6:4)

Every time he walks into his apartment building, that can be his “tassel.”

My “tassel” is a prayer I pray every morning from Revelation 4:11.

Our Lord and God,
you are worthy to receive
glory and honor and power,
because you have created all things,
and by your will
they exist and were created.

By your will, you created me, and I have breath for another day. Be glorified in my life.

What’s your tassel? If you don’t have one, find one!

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Acts

Following the majority

Acts

Following the majority is always the easy thing to do, especially when it happens to be what you want to do. But it’s not always right.

That’s what the centurion in charge of taking Paul (and the other prisoners) to Rome learned in this chapter.

Because of weather conditions, they were making much slower headway than they had hoped, but Paul knew that the weather would only get worse. So he warned them,

Men, I can see that our voyage is going to be disastrous and bring great loss to ship and cargo, and to our own lives also. (Acts 27:10)

Whether this was direct revelation or insight from God, or merely Paul’s own sailing experience is not clear.

What is clear is that the centurion didn’t want to wait. And after consulting with the pilot and the owner of the ship, the “majority” decided it would be best to sail on and winter at another harbor.

Why didn’t they listen to Paul?

For one thing, they probably figured he wasn’t a sailor, and they trusted their own judgment over his.

For another, they were impatient. They had lost time and probably wanted to make up for it.

But by following the “majority,” it nearly cost them their lives.

How about you? Do you follow what God is telling you, or do you simply follow the majority?

Sometimes, we follow the majority in terms of peer pressure. Everyone is doing something we know is wrong, and it’s hard to go against the grain.

Sometimes we follow the majority in terms of culture. I see this often times in Japan where Christians will compromise their faith at Buddhist ceremonies for the sake of “culture.”

But just because you’re following the majority does not make you right. And there are times when it puts you at odds with what God is telling you to do. Not only can that lead to disastrous consequences, those decisions also pain God.

Paul tells us,

Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. (Ephesians 4:30)

When we follow the majority at the expense of turning our backs on what God has said, that’s exactly what we end up doing: grieving God.

Who are you following?

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Luke Luke 4 Mark Mark1 Matthew Matthew 4

Following the Father

The gospels

Happy New Year all!

I suppose there’s no better way to start the year then remembering who we are to follow heading into the New Year. It’s the person whom Jesus followed while he walked this earth, and you see it clearly in these passages.

This is one of the most famous passages in scripture in which Jesus gets tempted in the desert.

But as I read it this time, and looked at the scripture that Jesus quoted in fighting the temptations thrown at him by Satan, one thing struck me: Just how much trust he put in his Father.

Filled with and led by the Holy Spirit, Jesus went out into the desert after his baptism, and stayed out there for 40 days.

It seems only fitting, then, that the scriptures he quoted came from Deuteronomy after the Israelites had been wandering around in the desert for 40 years. Because what Moses told the Israelites right after that, Jesus lived out in his life.

What did Moses say?

Remember how the LORD your God led you all the way in the desert these forty years, to humble you and to test you in order to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commands.

He humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna, which neither you nor your fathers had known, to teach you that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD. (Deuteronomy 8:2-3)

Just as the Father led the Israelites through the desert to test them, so he led Jesus out into the desert to be tested. Like the Israelites, Jesus was humbled, being caused to become hungry.

But unlike the Israelites, he refused to complain against his Father during that time. Rather, he trusted that his Father would provide what he needed, when he needed it.

Satan tried to get Jesus to rely on himself and his own powers to meet his needs by turning stones into bread. But Jesus refused, and relied solely on his Father in heaven to provide what he needed.

When Satan tempted Jesus to throw himself down from the temple and let the angels catch him, even quoting scripture to do so (which shows how important it is to understand context when we’re reading scripture), Jesus pointed to Deuteronomy 6, where Moses told the people,

Do not test the LORD your God as you did at Massah. (Deuteronomy 6:16)

What happened at Massah? The Israelites again showed a lack of trust in God, this time because they had no water, saying, “Is the Lord among us or not?” (Exodus 17:7)

Sometimes, we question God in the same way. We go through struggles, and say, “Is God really with me or not?”

Satan was basically tempting Jesus to question God in that way too. He was saying, “Is your Father really with you? If you’re going to serve him, you’d better find out by jumping off the temple. If he’s really with you, he’ll catch you.”

But Jesus refused to do so, fully believing that his Father was with him, though he couldn’t see him.

Finally, Satan tempted Jesus to worship him in order to gain the kingdoms of the world. But again Jesus refused. He would not let anything or anyone deter him from following his Father saying,

Away from me, Satan! For it is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only.’ (Matthew 4:10)

How about you? Who are you following as you head into this new year? Are you following the Father?

Are you trusting that he is with you and will meet your needs? Are you making following him your first priority, above your job, your family, your friends, and everything else?

Who are you following?