"The sinful mind is hostile to God. It does not submit to God's law, nor can it do so?" Romans 8:7 NIV
So, what is God's law? I would hope we are all familiar with the Ten Commandments, but what does God REALLY want from us as far his 'law' is concerned? From what I understand, and it is I am sure not 100% correct, but this is MY journey after all.
From what I understand the Ten Commandments were/are the groundwork for God's law, it explains to us how we are supposed to act toward God, ourselves and of course our fellow man. In any society or group there has to be rules and regulations or the entire thing will crumble. The same concept applies in Christianity and your relationship with God. Even though we are forgiven of ALL of our wrong doing with a mere request for forgiveness, that doesn't mean that he wants us to go out and destroy the name of Christianity, destroy his image or the things we all stand for. He wants us to BE LIKE HIM.
"Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth and over all the creature that move along the ground."" Genesis 1:26
So it sounds to me that he wants us to be like him, follow him but we will never be him. This guy was PERFECT! He was put on this earth and went through more trials and temptations than we can ever imagine and yet he managed to remain faithful to his father and not sin, not even once. But, we are human, we were made in his image not his clones. He wants us to follow him and need him. So in order to do these things all he is asking that we follow the rules.
I think the first and most important rule is that we come to God willingly and with all of our heart, after all who wants to follow rules that we don't believe in or support. (I mean we all have to follow basic rules to be a member of society, and this is where the Ten Commandments set the groundwork.) If we don't come to him or join him willingly how can we really get to know who or what he is really about right? I think the second part of this 'law' agreement is simply based in love. We must love God, we must love our neighbors, love our parents, love our spouses etc... In order to keep the commandments we must put someone else above ourselves and 'love' them enough to not sin against them. Sounds simple right? If it were so simple and easy to follow would God really have made Moses go to the top of the mountain and write the rules in stone and them come back down and have God himself scare the Israelites? God said he is a jealous and wants us only to believe and listen to him, that is rule #1. This all seems to straight forward, Follow the Ten Commandments, love those around us more than ourselves and do all of this willingly. But it's not as easy as it sounds. I am reminded of the funny message/prayer
"Dear Lord, So far I have done alright. I haven't gossiped, haven't lost my temper, haven't been greedy, grumpy, nasty selfish or overindulgent. I'm really glad about that. But in a few moments,God, I'm going to get out of bed. And from then on I'm going to need a lot more help."
I think that hilariously sums up our need for God and how hard it really is to follow the laws of God. But we need to remember he is there. Take a breath, take ten if you need to, say a little prayer and remember, when we need him the most he is the closest to us. The rules are there for a reason and we make not like the and at times difficult to follow, but we have the most patient, loving and forgiving father to set s back up when we fall and be there for us when we stray from the path.
These aren't impossible rules to follow, but they aren't always easy. But the more we put God first, follow these rules daily it will become second nature. Just take it moment by moment and remember we are made in his image, we aren't him.
Thank you Lord for your patience, I am going to need a lot of it!
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