For the Lord your God is a consuming fire, a jealous God.
Deuteronomy 4:24
The bible is clear from cover to cover that our relationship to God must be our #1 priority in our life, yet this is the one priority that will be attacked most often and most aggressively. From the Genesis account of when Satan tempted Eve, to the Book of Revelation where Satan goes full force in trying to destroy all the saints, a spiritual war is going on for the souls of all people. In the above verse in Deuteronomy, we can understand why God is jealous for His creations made in His image; He loves us and knows it is essential that we choose to love Him back. Our very purpose in being created was so we could have a deep personal relationship with Him that eclipses all other relationships in our life. God gives us our every heart beat and breath, and He sent His Son, Jesus Christ, to be our redemption sacrifice to provide us the ability to relate to Him. Our Lord has every right to ask us to respond in faith and to put Him first in all things as He is the giver of all good things. (see James 1:17) What is more, our God is a consuming fire that will burn up anything and everything that is an obstacle to our knowing Him and loving Him. So what does this mean in our day to day life? It means each day we wake up we need to choose to surrender to Him and His purposes in our will so we can then follow Jesus as a disciple. (see Luke 9:23) It means we need to draw close to our Lord in our times of prayer, bible reading and living out our faith so we can grow in love and trust of Him each day. The Living God has the best of plans for us, they just may be very different than ours are! We need to let Him lead us as we learn to love Him and obey His Spirit and Word. This is the challenge of being a believer, and it takes the grace of God working in us to be successful. The world, our flesh and the devil will fight this effort all the way. We need to be sure who we belong to: Jesus as our Lord and Savior rather than self-rule. When we feel like it just doesn’t matter what we choose to do, we need to remind ourselves that our God is a consuming fire and He is jealous for us as our Creator, Redeemer and the One who loves us completely. Follow Jesus each and every day!
Love in Christ,
Pastor Gary Houdek