Focus

Let yourself become open to God and the knowledge that comes from the Word. Ask God for peace at this time.

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Read

Deuteronomy 5:22-33 New Revised Standard Version (NRSV)

These words the Lord spoke with a loud voice to your whole assembly at the mountain, out of the fire, the cloud, and the thick darkness, and he added no more. He wrote them on two stone tablets, and gave them to me. When you heard the voice out of the darkness, while the mountain was burning with fire, you approached me, all the heads of your tribes and your elders; and you said, “Look, the Lord our God has shown us his glory and greatness, and we have heard his voice out of the fire. Today we have seen that God may speak to someone and the person may still live. So now why should we die? For this great fire will consume us; if we hear the voice of the Lord our God any longer, we shall die. For who is there of all flesh that has heard the voice of the living God speaking out of fire, as we have, and remained alive? Go near, you yourself, and hear all that the Lord our God will say. Then tell us everything that the Lord our God tells you, and we will listen and do it.”
The Lord heard your words when you spoke to me, and the Lord said to me: “I have heard the words of this people, which they have spoken to you; they are right in all that they have spoken. If only they had such a mind as this, to fear me and to keep all my commandments always, so that it might go well with them and with their children forever! Go say to them, ‘Return to your tents.’ But you, stand here by me, and I will tell you all the commandments, the statutes and the ordinances, that you shall teach them, so that they may do them in the land that I am giving them to possess.” You must therefore be careful to do as the Lord your God has commanded you; you shall not turn to the right or to the left. You must follow exactly the path that the Lord your God has commanded you, so that you may live, and that it may go well with you, and that you may live long in the land that you are to possess.

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Reflect

There are obligations and responsibilities of each of us in every relationship. Relationship is defined this way in the New Oxford American Dictionary: The state of being connected by blood or marriage: we can trace our relationships to a common ancestor; the way in which two or more people or organizations regard and behave toward each other.

We are connected by the blood of Jesus, humankind is in a love-relationship beginning with God…married to His sovereignty, His commands, and we praise God for our freedom to worship, and worship. We have a divinely orchestrated ancestry beginning in the beginning, in the image of God. Our loyal and divine ancestry assures our respect for Him and each other, even when we do not agree. Our behavior toward God, and all His creations are consistent with our ‘talk’ and prepared speeches. Our standards are above the world’s understanding of what our standards ought to be, and not akin to that of the world.

I am grateful that, as noted in verse 24, they heard His voice, and in my time of darkness, when I ended up in the wilderness, God heard MY voice. Hallelujah!!

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Pray

Father in heaven, I feel your presence and I am so grateful for our relationship, our connection. Oh, if the world would see what I see, in the spirit. Oh, if only the world would purposely spend time with you. Father, I pray for this world, and against the spirit of worldliness. I pray for the church, and against the abuse and misuse by church folk who have ran them off from the church house and thrown away the broken, looked over, left out, and let down among us all. Have your way in each of us. In Jesus’ name, amen.

Go with God!