God’s blessings and God’s ways go hand in hand, inseparable from each other. His blessings always accompany his ways, and his ways always invite his blessings.
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Scripture
Deuteronomy 28:8-9, 12
8 The LORD will command the blessing on you in your barns and in all that you undertake. And he will bless you in the land that the LORD your God is giving you. 9 The LORD will establish you as a people holy to himself, as he has sworn to you, if you keep the commandments of the LORD your God and walk in his ways.
12 The LORD will open to you his good treasury, the heavens, to give the rain to your land in its season and to bless all the work of your hands. And you shall lend to many nations, but you shall not borrow.
Deuteronomy 29:18b
Beware lest there be among you a root bearing poisonous and bitter fruit, 19 one who, when he hears the words of this sworn covenant, blesses himself in his heart, saying, ‘I shall be safe, though I walk in the stubbornness of my heart.’ This will lead to the sweeping away of moist and dry alike.
Observation
God has amazing blessings in store for his people…when his people follow his ways. The problem is that God’s people decide from time to time to claim God’s blessing…while rejecting his ways. It doesn’t work! God’s blessings and God’s ways go hand in hand, inseparable from each other. His blessings always accompany his ways, and his ways always invite his blessings.
Application
What an encouraging and uplifting reminder of my Father’s blessings, and what a sober reminder that there are strings attached to them! When I pursue the heart of God and walk in his ways, I cannot help but experience his blessing–in fact, Deuteronomy 18:2 says that his blessings will ‘overtake’ me when I walk in his ways. I can’t outrun them even if I try!
It makes me remember afternoons walking along the train tracks in Oregon as a young boy, and hearing the sound of a train behind me–there would be no way for me to outrun the locomotive as it approached. Yet just like that train locomotive, I can avoid God’s blessings in my life if I step off of the path on which they are found. And just as it would be unrealistic for me to step away from the train track and still worry about being struck by a train, so it is illogical for me to live my life outside of the ways of God and expect his blessings to follow me off the tracks defined by his word.
Whether in simple and obvious ways (like living in financial debt), or in more subtle ways (having an arrogant and prideful heart)…God’s blessings cannot follow me when I step outside of the path on which the blessings are found.
Today, I choose to walk in God’s ways. I choose to live my life to the best of my ability in a way which is pleasing to him, and I choose to rely on his strength to empower me when my own strength runs out.
Prayer
God, thank you for the blessings that I am promised in your word! Thank you for your ways which guide me, and your word which challenges me daily to grow and develop in you. Help me today to quickly realize when my feet are drifting from your way, so that I could experience all of the blessing that you desire to pour into my life.
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