Day 50: Obedience Means Doing

Matthew 4; Exodus 25-27; Proverbs 12

Jesus heals every kind of pain and sickness.  There is nothing that he did not and cannot heal. Physical, emotional, spiritual, mental, financial pain--God can heal them all. We just have to let him.

Only living right, obeying God, will lead to life and security.  Sin, any sin, is deadly and destructive.  Through God's word, he teaches us how to live right, to tell the truth, to have deep roots.

(Two-fer)

Matthew 5:1-20; Exodus 28-29; Proverbs 13

Obedience to God is the main command.  That’s part of the “love the Lord with all your heart, soul, and mind.”  We have a purpose in this life, we are salt that needs to be salty, we are a light that should not be hidden. We need to learn to live our lives in complete surrender to God and his will. May we learn to trust God to guide and lead.  We must obey the law “better” than the Pharisees.  By “better,” Jesus means to obey them in the way they were intended, not as a tool to measure and judge others, but by a standard to which we hold ourselves.

The worship rituals seem so tedious, so precise, I would be so afraid to mess up.  It seems like a lot of work to make all those sacrifices each day and do it perfectly.  But, that makes sense—it should take a lot of work for people to be holy enough to connect with the Lord.  Here I sit at my computer, in my pjs, just typing away, believing that God is here, or at least listening.  I suppose I’m reverent, but not nearly as much as the priests.  But in this day and age, as Jesus represents, I can connect with God on a personal level.  My fear and respect for God is definitely not what it should be, and for that, I pray that God forgives me!  I am so thankful for the life he has given me and I pray that I am making him proud.  God looks at us with mixed feelings—joy, because we are his children, and sadness, because of our daily disobedience, but all in love. I hope that we have the will overcome our sins, but we can only do it with Christ's help.  I am not strong enough or resilient enough to make it happen on my own. We cannot do it by ourselves, but still we have to take action—take action against evil, against sins, against the mistreatment of others, against poverty, against anything.  We cannot just sit and wait for God to do it for us.