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CONSECRATION
Wake up, sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.
Jesus, I belong to you.
I lift up my heart to you.
I set my mind on you.
I fix my eyes on you.
I offer my body to you as a living sacrifice.
Jesus, we belong to you.
Praying in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, amen.
THE WORD OF THE LORD
Proverbs 6:20–23 NIV
My son, keep your father’s command
and do not forsake your mother’s teaching.
Bind them always on your heart;
fasten them around your neck.
When you walk, they will guide you;
when you sleep, they will watch over you;
when you awake, they will speak to you.
For this command is a lamp,
this teaching is a light,
and correction and instruction
are the way to life,
CONSIDER THIS . . .
Today’s text reminded me of one of my favorite passages in the Bible. It comes from Deuteronomy 6:
Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates. (vv. 4–9)
A life of wisdom comes from remembering, and remembering comes from repetition. There are at least a couple of ways to build remembering into life. We can build private spiritual compartments into our days dedicated to such purposes, or we can find ways to weave remembrance throughout the normal course of everyday lives in public. The Word of God seems to instruct people more often in the latter approach.
In my own experience, I have tended to err on the former side. I have thought of devotional life as a private, personal, and a primarily spiritual experience; a time of directing my thoughts and emotions toward God. While I don’t want to decry this approach, I find the method outlined in today’s text and in Deuteronomy 6 to be more beneficial (and fun).
Faith is profoundly personal but cannot be privatized. The formation of faith requires relationships and community. The people of Israel were instructed not to wear their religion on their sleeves, but to practice their faith in relationships in the context of their everyday, ordinary lives.
Today’s text instructs us to remember the wise instruction of our parents. The key to biblical remembrance is not to run through something in your mind but to get it off the scroll, out of your head, and into your everyday, walking-around life. For instance, wear it around your neck so that it will remind you when you walk, when you sleep, and when you awake. That’s pretty much all the time. It’s not about a quiet time, but an “all the time.”
Deuteronomy teaches us to impress wisdom, which is the Word of God, on our hearts and to impress it on our children. It’s something we talk about when we (a) sit at home, (b) walk along the road, (c) when we lie down, and (d) when we get up. Again, not about a quiet time, but an “all the time” kind of practice. There’s more. Our hands are always before us, so tie these words as symbols on our hands (or write it) and bind it on our foreheads so we will become reminders of this wisdom as we are with others. We are instructed to “write them on our gates and our doorframe,” so in case we missed it when we came through the gate, we will see it on the doorframe of our house, and others who come will see it and be reminded also.
Here’s what I gain from this: Wisdom fashions an everyday world shaped by the Word of God. Wisdom comes to us through words, and words shape worlds. God created the world with wise and powerful words, and he wills to fashion our lives by those same words. These words cannot be left on the pages of our Bibles. We must find practical, everyday ways of keeping the wisdom of the Word of God ever before us.
Above all, we want to remember what the wisdom of God is all for and all about—Loving the Lord our God with all our hearts and with all our souls and with all our strength. And loving each other and everybody else with that same kind of love. If we get everything else and miss that, we missed everything. If we get this and miss out on everything else, we got it all.
PRAYER
Lord Jesus, you are the wisdom of heaven on earth—pure, peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial, and sincere. You are my wisdom, and I am your witness. I want to know you better today. Praying in your name, amen.
JOURNAL PROMPTS
How are you taking words from the Word of God (i.e., the Bible) and posting them in your everyday world? How is the Word of God being woven into your days and hours? How might you grow in this way? What is one practical step you might take today to enact this?
SING
Today, we will sing “Wonderful Words of Life” (hymn 429) from our Seedbed hymnal, Our Great Redeemer’s Praise.
For the Awakening,
J. D. Walt
John David (J. D.) Walt Jr. is the Sower-in-Chief for Seedbed and the pastor of the Gillett Methodist Church in Gillett, Arkansas.
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2 Responses
Another great one, JD. I haven’t really looked at that passage from Deuteronomy in the way you put it.
*You mentioned that you were given a video and to see it on YouTube. I clicked on the link to the YouTube link on today’s devotional but it says ‘private’ and I couldn’t see what you were saying. Just wanted to let you know.
All the time keep your heart, your eyes, and your ears focused on Jesus, His commandments, and His innocence. (2 Corinthians 5:21) Love Him with all you’ve got. Keep Him as the center of your everyday life.
Refuse to let guilty feelings keep you from living in openhearted intimacy with the risen Jesus. Every time an impure thought grabs your attention, push it aside and turn your attention back (Luke 5:32) to the presence of Jesus (Matthew 28:20) and to His wisdom. Let the gift of Christ’s forgiveness free you up to live your life free from guilt and shame and empowers you to deeply love Him and to keep His commandments. (John 14:15)
When toying with temptation (James 1:14-15) has taken away your innocence and filled you with guilty feelings, making excuses won’t remove the accusations that gnaw on you from within. Pleading not guilty won’t ease your conscience, but Jesus can drive away the accusations that assault you. (John 8:1-11)
Every loss of innocence quenches God the Holy Spirit (1 Thessalonians 5:19) and hinders the fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22-23) from growing within you. Use God’s gift of discernment (1 Corinthians 12:10) to guard your heart (Proverbs 4:23-27) and protect your innocence. Avoid exposing yourself to things that steal innocence. Instead, continually watch, read, and think about what is true, honest, just, pure, lovely, of good report, virtuous, and praiseworthy. (Philippians 4:8)
Humbly receiving Christ’s forgiveness is the way (John 14:6) back to inner peace. (John 14:27) Every time you sin in thought, words, or actions, cry out to Jesus and sincerely ask Him to have mercy on you. (Mark 10:47-48) Genuinely ask Him to forgive you and to create a clean heart within you. (Psalm 51:10) If you truthfully do that, He will cleanse you, (Isaiah 1:18) flood you with forgiveness, and give you the desire to daily follow and obey Him. (Mark 8:34)
Saying that you’re innocent doesn’t make you not guilty. If you want to lose that guilty feeling till it’s gone, gone, gone; put away your guilt producing thoughts and behaviors, and fully surrender your life to the risen Jesus Christ. (Acts 3:19) Let Him forgive you and cleanse you (1 John 1:9) Let Jesus make and keep you pure within. (Matthew 5:8)
Let the nostalgia that you feel for innocence, whenever you see a small child playing, (Matthew 2-5) motivate you to always seek first the kingdom — inner government — of God in your life (Matthew 6:33) and the ever-increasing cleansing, healing, and freedom that Christ offers you. (2 Corinthians 3:12-17)
Jesus asks us to get out of the boat and walk on water with Him. When He does, we need to be free to obey Jesus and not be bound by religious traditions, (Mark 7:13) protocol, and human control. (1 Peter 5:3)