Thursday 19 Jul 2012

Thursday Reading: Deuteronomy 6:4-5

Key Verse: Deuteronomy 6:4
4  Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD:

Devotion:
If I seem to spend too much time talking about The new Testament scriptures it is probably because that is where I am reading at the moment – but our thoughts must always dwell on the whole of God’s Word and not just the parts that we think we should read or the parts that we think encourage us. Our walk, after all, is not with a brief section of what has happened in this world but with the whole world and the whole of God’s creation. If we look at part of the truth then we will learn what we look at, but if we spend time to find out the whole truth, then we will begin to pick up wisdom.

If I were asked to try and summarise religion from a few verses in the bible then these are likely candidates! This is the basis of how God wanted Israel to look at Him. When we look into the original text we find word such as Jehovah and Elohiym. These are a couple of the names given to God, each describing God in different ways but each talking about the one, eternal, living God that we know today. Jehovah describes God as self-existent and eternal. Elohiym describes God as the supreme God of all. We can say that something is lost in the translation somewhere unless we know in our hearts that The LORD is self-existent and that God is the supreme God and that they are one and the same!

God is not just limited to how we can describe Him either because we shall never know the true extent of our God. We shall understand more about Him when we are with Him in heaven, but I’m pretty sure that we shall continue to learn more about Him all the time that we are with Him. So when it comes to us showing God a bit of respect or a bit of love – that is too small a commitment and falls far short of what we owe Him.

Let us therefore turn to our one true God, Lord of all, King of Kings, God of everything; and love Him with all that we have within us. That should not be such as hard task to do when we can turn to another human being, who has done nothing in comparison to God, and love them with our whole hearts! But we need to make sure that it is not just an earthly love but a full, spiritual love that we express to our God. Loving someone else is wonderful, fulfilling and fun. Loving God is all together more and without end!

Points to Ponder:
Do you love someone special?

How deep is your love for God?