God showers us every day of our lives with unlimited blessings. We may not even realize it, but they come from His hand to each of us in a steady flow. Food, shelter, the beauty around us, even the breath of life in our lungs.
What does the Lord ask of us in return? He explicitly revealed this to the exiles as they returned from Babylon, speaking through the prophet Zechariah. God asks that we acknowledge Him as Lord in our hearts, and demonstrate it by the nature and motives of our actions towards others. He explained that it was the peoples’ failure to do these things that led to their removal from the good land of Judah, in the first place.
8 The word of the Lord came to Zechariah: 9 “The Lord of Hosts says this: Make fair decisions. Show faithful love and compassion to one another. 10 Do not oppress the widow or the fatherless, the foreigner or the poor, and do not plot evil in your hearts against one another. 11 But they refused to pay attention and turned a stubborn shoulder; they closed their ears so they could not hear. 12 They made their hearts like a rock so as not to obey the law or the words that the Lord of Hosts had sent by His Spirit through the earlier prophets. Therefore great anger came from the Lord of Hosts. 13 Just as He had called, and they would not listen, so when they called, I would not listen,” says the Lord of Hosts. 14 “I scattered them with a windstorm over all the nations that had not known them, and the land was left desolate behind them, with no one coming or going. They turned a pleasant land into a desolation.” Zechariah 7:8-14 (HCSB)
These words still have important meaning and application for us today. God’s priorities have not changed. Will we be perfect about honoring this? No. But as He is perfect in His righteousness, He is also perfect in His forgiveness. When we fail, if we will turn to Him in humble repentance and seek to make right the harm we have done, God will gladly forgive us, and wipe the slate clean.
When asked about the two most important commandments, Jesus replied that we are to love the Lord God with all of our heart, our soul, and our strength, and to love our neighbor as ourselves. Here “neighbor” means everyone we encounter, both the friendly and the likable as well as the bullies, the thieves, and the cheats. Wow, that part is not at all easy to do, but it is important to Him that we make the effort to try.
Bad habits and attitudes are weights that slow us down and threaten to trip us up on our life’s journey. They are often addictive and can be hard to strip off without God’s powerful help. As the apostle Paul wrote to the Romans:
16 Don’t you know that if you offer yourselves to someone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of that one you obey—either of sin leading to death or of obedience leading to righteousness? 17 But thank God that, although you used to be slaves of sin, you obeyed from the heart that pattern of teaching you were transferred to, 18 and having been liberated from sin, you became enslaved to righteousness. Romans 6:16-18 (HCSB)
We are righteous only because our faith in Christ covers us with God’s holiness and purity. His strength helps us to put down whatever sin is entangling us, and He helps to lead us away from old, familiar paths of destruction, if we are willing. We are blessed to live in an era of grace and mercy offered through the loving sacrifice of Jesus on the cross and resurrection from the dead. Let us not turn a blind eye, a deaf ear, or stubborn shoulder to the request of an amazing God, who loves us so much that He did not even spare His own beloved Son for our eternal redemption. He is worth us adjusting our goals and objectives to meet His divine priorities.
Reflection
Who has God put in your path to love that you have overlooked or dismissed?
Father God, through Your Holy Spirit, help make Your divine priorities the priorities of my own heart. Forgive me for any times I have shown coldness and hardness towards the vulnerable or the weak, the ones whom You love so much. Grant me patience with those who know how to push me towards anger. Help me to make amends for my foolish words and actions, and to become a useful and holy instrument for Your will and purposes. Free us from harmful addictions or any slavery to evil. We ask this in the loving and powerful name of Jesus Christ. Amen!
1 Therefore, since we also have such a large cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us lay aside every weight and the sin that so easily ensnares us. Let us run with endurance the race that lies before us, 2 keeping our eyes on Jesus, the source and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that lay before Him endured a cross and despised the shame and has sat down at the right hand of God’s throne. Hebrews 12:1 (HCSB)
Have a blessed and beautiful day in the Lord today.
Daily Meditations from the Genealogy of Jesus 