Friday, August 23, 2024
With Your Whole Heart
Joyful are those who obey his laws and search for him with all their hearts. (Psalm 119:2 NLT)
If you want to be holy (and happy as a result), then you must actively walk in God’s ways.
But what does it mean to walk in God’s ways? According to Scripture, it means walking in the law of the Lord. And the law of the Lord is not something that we should fear or shun.
Some Christians say, “I’m not under the law; I’m under grace.” Now, in a sense that is true. As believers, we are no longer under the curse of the law, which we were unable to keep with our own strength. But also understand that Jesus said, “I did not come to abolish the law of Moses or the writings of the prophets. No, I came to accomplish their purpose” (Matthew 5:17 NLT).
We don’t keep the law to earn the approval of God. That, however, doesn’t mean we disregard it. It doesn’t mean that we say, “I’m not under the law anymore, so I can do whatever I want.”
The principles of the law, the Ten Commandments, certainly still apply in our lives. The difference is we don’t obey because we have to; we obey because we want to. That law, instead of being a list of rules that we can never follow perfectly in our own strength, is now written on the tablets of our hearts, as the Bible says (see 2 Corinthians 3:3).
God’s rules become our delight. They become our joy. We obey them because it’s our desire to obey them. We don’t see these principles as restrictive; we see them as protective.
It reminds me of the day years ago when a little finch landed in our backyard. I saw the little brightly colored bird just sitting there, and I walked over to it, expecting it to flutter away. But it stayed where it was. Then I bent down and held out my finger, and it hopped right on.
I walked inside with the little finch still sitting on my finger and said, “Hey, Cathe, look what I just found in the yard!”
“Where did you get that?” she asked.
“It was just sitting in the yard.”
“Well, what do we do with it?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “It looks sort of miserable. It won’t move.”
Then I asked my son Jonathan to see if we could borrow a birdcage from one of our neighbors. When he brought one back, I opened the door to the cage, and the little bird hopped in and started chirping. It was jumping from perch to perch. It was the happiest bird I’d ever seen.
What I found interesting about that bird is that it enjoyed captivity. Some would see a cage as restrictive. But for that little finch, the cage represented protection that kept the predators away.
Some people look at the law of God and see it as restrictive, as something that stops them from really enjoying life. But it is protecting us from things that can harm us. It’s the way to live life to its fullest. Thus, the law of God is something that we should want to wholeheartedly keep.
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