Taken As Directed +

Now it shall come to pass, if you diligently obey the voice of the Lord your God, to observe carefully all His commandments which I command you today, that the Lord your God will set you high above all nations of the earth. And all these blessings shall come upon you and overtake you, because you obey the voice of the Lord your God:
Deuteronomy 28:1-2 NKJV

My son and daughter-in-love were in town this weekend and yesterday, at church, he had a conversation with one of his former youth students at the request of her mother. The doctors had finally been able to diagnose and then prescribe medicines for an ailment that had plagued her for several years. Now that it's been properly diagnosed, the doctors proclaim it can be completely cured if she will take the 2 medications as prescribed for the next 18 months. There are no known ill side effects to the medications, but the student has weaned herself off one and believes she's doing okay just taking the one "whenever" rather than as directed by the doctor. His facetious response to her was, "I'm sorry, I didn't realize I should be calling you 'Doctor' -  I didn't know that you had earned your doctorate before graduating from high school." And in the end, Aaron was able to convince her to take the prescriptions as directed for her ultimate good.

As we stood there in the parking lot, I saw the correlation between that situation and how we, as Christians, do the same thing to God. Even though we know we are NOT God and we don't have in hand all the knowledge pertaining to life, we tend to make life-altering decisions based on what we know, acting like we DO know everything. When we first become Christians, we want to do everything right - we read our Bibles, we pray, we gather with other believers, we want to do it all exactly as we've been instructed.

Then, as we walk it out every day, there are times the discipline of it becomes tedious. We want to watch a movie or play a computer game instead of reading the Word. We'll chat or text with friends instead of taking the time to pray... sleep in or go to the beach instead of going to church and then convince ourselves it's supposed to be a day of rest, anyway, and we're resting...

I'm not saying that watching a movie, playing a computer game, chatting, texting, sleeping in, or going to the beach are bad things in and of themselves. The danger lies in thinking we know what's best for our lives. Left to our own devices, humans tend to choose the path of least resistance, the easy way, every time. Our text for today reads, if you diligently obey the voice of the Lord your God, not 'whenever' we feel like it.

If we read through to chapter 30, we find this in verses 19 and 20,
I call heaven and earth as witnesses today against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life, that both you and your descendants may live; that you may love the Lord your God, that you may obey His voice, and that you may cling to Him, for He is your life and the length of your days;

God gave us a free will. We can choose to love Him or not. Daily, we can take up our cross as directed by Christ, or we can lay it down and walk our own way. Let's do it - taken as directed.

Prayer:

Father,
           Open our eyes to see that we don't know it all. Help us to make the right choice of following You and Your instructions to the letter. Father, we want to diligently obey Your voice. Help us to clearly hear and understand Your direction. In Jesus' Name we pray. Amen