Exodus 20:19 - And they said to Moses, “You speak to us, and we will listen. But don’t let God speak directly to us, or we will die!”
Chambers opens today’s devotional by saying:
We do not consciously disobey God, we simply do not heed Him. God has given us His commands; there they are, but we do not pay attention to them not because of wilful disobedience but because we do not love and respect Him.
How true this is – most of the time we don’t set out thinking “God wants me to do x, but I don’t care, I’m going to do y” (though I believe we ALL certainly have had those moments as well - at least I know I have). More often than not, we simply fail to think about Him at all. We ignore what he may be commanding us to do, all too often, because we simply ignore HIM.
Loving God has always been a bit difficult for me. To say such a thing sounds to be on the verge of blasphemy, but I’m simply being honest. If you asked most church-going folk “Do you love the Lord” they would answer quickly and unequivocally “Well, YES, of course I do!” and many would be offended at the mere suggestion that they do not. But I believe that truly loving God requires an intimate knowledge of who he is that is only acquired when we spend time with Him in prayer and study, and many of us just don’t take the time for that.
Suppose you introduce a dear friend to a man you know at church, and after their introduction, they sit together each week during the service. When church is over, they wave goodbye not to see or talk to each other until the following Sunday when the pattern repeats itself. You know this man well, and have told your friend quite a bit about him, but their contact with each other has been limited entirely to their time at church. They never have any real private conversations and never spend time together on the phone or otherwise during the week. Then suddenly your friend announces to you that they are in love and have decided to get married.
Would you feel as if they’ve had an opportunity to really develop a relationship? Would you feel as if a true sustaining love could have developed under such limited contact? I think most of us would be concerned that our friend was jumping into a marriage with someone she simply didn't know very well.
And yet, how often do we think we are developing a relationship with God simply because we go to church and hear someone else talk about Him on Sunday morning? While this is undoubtedly part of getting to know who God is, to limit our time with the Lord to this hour on Sunday and then think we have a relationship with Him is as ludicrous as the relationship scenario above. We can’t truly develop a relationship with God, we can’t KNOW Him, unless we spend time with Him. If we don’t take the time to pray and study His word we can’t know who he is, and if we don’t know who he is how can we possibly love Him?
The second aspect of this time spent with God is that expands our opportunities to hear Him, and our responsibilities to heed that which he says. Chambers brings up an interesting point. He says:
We show how little we love God by preferring to listen to His servants only. We like to listen to personal testimonies, but we do not desire that God Himself should speak to us. Why are we so terrified lest God should speak to us? Because we know that if God does speak, either the thing must be done or we must tell God we will not obey Him. If it is only the servant's voice we hear, we feel it is not imperative, we can say "Well, that is simply your own idea, though I don't deny it is probably God's truth."
Whether it is that we want to do something that may NOT be in God’s will to do or whether we wish to avoid something we suspect IS in God’s will to do, it’s always easier to follow our human interests (rather than our spiritual ones) if we’ve got other believer’s “backing us up.” There have been times in my life when I've felt strongly led to do something but have sought enough “opinions” from people that I've managed to talk myself out of it. It's certainly easier to cite the counsel of other people than to just say to God “I know you are leading me in this direction, but I simply don’t want to go there.” That isn't to suggest that we should never seek Godly counsel, or ask other believers for insight, but I think most of us know when we are sincerely seeking guidance and when are simply seeking an escape. The key is to be honest enough with ourselves to admit the difference and the only way to be consistently sincere in that is to consistently find ourselves on our knees in front of our Lord.
As we spend time with our God, we will learn who He is. Our love for Him will grow and our desire to heed His words will grow out of that love.
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