10.9.24 ~ Step 2 ...

Good morning!

Commercial: It's All About Your Anxiety: How Do I Get the Peace of God and the God of peace (Phil. 4:1-13; 1 Cor. 12:25)

Are you ready for the 2nd step to climb to new heights spiritually? Take a look at the verse below, and once again, pay particular attention to the highlighted part. What do you think this phrase, “and you will return until the Lord, your God,” means? Does anything about it strike you as odd?

And you will return until the Lord, your God, with all your heart and with all your soul, and you will listen to His voice according to all that I am commanding you this day you and your children.

You will return until the Lord, your God. Huh? It's kinda an awkward phrase. You’d expect it to say: 'and you will return to the Lord, your God'. And that would make sense because that’s exactly what we find in Deuteronomy 30:10 where he directly states 'You will return to the Lord, your God'.

What's the difference between the two? In the latter, when I return to the Lord, I've made it all the way. In the former, when I return until the Lord, my repentance is a step by step process.

If we go back to step 1, the mind has just presented the facts to the heart and the heart is trying to make sense of it all. The heart has this longing to go all the way, but it doesn't have the strength to do it. The heart feels too rejected. The want is there but the ability to do it isn't nurtured enough...I want to quit smoking or..., but I just can't muster up enough inside of me to do it.  

5 more steps to go...

Commercial: Salvation: Past, Present and Future - of my salvation journey. The focus in Scripture is 99.9% on the end of our salvation; the salvation of our soul (1 Pet. 1:3-12; James. 1:16-22; 2:14-26l Heb. 10:36-39)

Shalom!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

3.8.25

Good morning! Have you ever considered the meaning of the 153 fish that were caught by Yeshua's disciples in John 21:4-12? You remember the story, right? It's the story many of us have experienced too often in our journey...we've been 'fishing' all night long and NOTHING. Then, with a listening ear, we grab our nets one more time, and with a mighty heave we throw the net in a different direction over the boat, and...my oh my, the boat's about to sink because there are so many fish in the net; yet the nets don't break. What a story! What a miracle! What 'fish finding vision Yeshua had'! What obedience; especially after doing it for so long 'my way'. What an enigma that Yeshua already had fish cooking on the shore when the boys arrived! What wisdom he displayed in His instructions to the boys! Am I listening, acting, and throwing in the right direction? Are my nets empty (Matt. 4:19)? Have you ever felt like you're outside the camp, isolate...
Read more

3.20.25

Good morning! Yesterday, we learned some essential truths about how to 'be still and know that He is God (Psa. 46:10). Today, I want to ask you a different question based on life's ability to throw a wide variety of circumstances at us!  One of the most difficult situations is when we are threatened by someone or some circumstance. Have you ever been threatened?  Oh, maybe no one came up to you with a gun, or shouted at you with malice, or told you that you were going to be tortured or punished.  Maybe all the threat you ever had was the innuendo of rejection, or the social snub or something much less violent than jail time.  But my guess is that if you are traveling the road with Yeshua, living a Torah lifestyle, you know what it means to be threatened. Every time the circumstances of your life look as though they are about to cave in, you are threatened.  It might not be a threat from a physical enemy, then again...but we all know that in one form or another t...
Read more

3.22.25

Good morning! Shabbat shalom! Although the portion of Vayakhel/and he assembled is almost entirely focused on the construction of the tabernacle, it begins by reminding the children of Israel that no work may be done on the Sabbath (Ex. 35:2,3). Why does it begin here rather than jumping right into how to construct the Tabernacle? Enquiring minds want to know :-) By placing the topic of the Sabbath against the construction of the Tabernacle it's God's way of defining the boundaries of the Sabbath...that even the most intimate work for the Lord needs to be put aside for His 'Date Day'. However, upon further investigation, there’s another layer to understand that connects us back to the golden calf (Ex. 32). As we know, while Moses was up on the mount getting the instructions from God the children of Israel decided to make an object that would replace Moses, their deliverer; The object, later known as the golden calf, originally intended as a 'necessary' means to ...
Read more