"And it will be, because you hear these judgments, and will keep and do them,
that Adonai your God will keep to you the covenant and the kindness which
He has sown to your fathers. He will love you, and bless you, and multiply you,
and will bless the fruit of your womb, and the fruit of your ground, your grain,
and your new wine, and your oil, the increase of your oxen, and the wealth
of your flock, in the land which He has sworn to your fathers to give to you."
(Deuteronomy 7:12-13)
The stipulations for the covenant that Adonai cut with Yis'rael are simple:
listen to, keep and obey the judgments of Adonai, and He will love you-
that is, He will bless you and give your increase. As we grow and mature
in our faith by hearing His words, keeping them and doing them, surely we
can expect Adonai's blessings to be poured out upon us. We need to realize,
however, that those blessings may not be exactly what we expect.
When Adonai blesses us, it is not with adornments or other non-utilitarian
embellishments. Being blessed does not mean that we have discretionary
income, extravagant things, and everything we ever thought we wanted.
For Adonai, blessing His people means giving them the essentials of life-
and giving those things in great abundance.
If we are truly to appreciate Adonai's blessings, we would do well to shed
the shackles of worldly trappings and other things that we had once
mistakenly labeled as "important".
Adonai's promises are simple-He will bless the fruit of our bodies,
the fruit of our ground, and the fruit of our labor. Make no mistake,
there is great truth here. We cannot look at our ancestors of old and
think that God chose to bless them with simple things merely because
they were simple people with simple needs.
On the contrary, Adonai's design for His holy ones in all generations
was that we would be simple people with simple needs. Complexity
of life is not from Him-it is a byproduct of our "civilized" living.
When we allow ourselves to get caught up in the self-made intricacies
of life, our values and priorities become confused. Living according to
the Scriptures enables us to be objective-to not embrace the values
and priorities of the world, but of the Lord.
We may live in a "civilized" society, but that does not negate the truth
that Adonai has called us to live as simple people who are not caught
up in the ways of the world. As we count these days from the omer*,
let us allow the Lord to distance us from the unimportant things of
life. It's time to get back to the basics, where being blessed simply
means that we have plenty of only what we need...
Adonai purify me-separate me from the trappings of my life.
Lord, show me the areas of my life that are truly unimportant-
help me to push them aside, and replace them with the essentials
of living a holy life for You. I bless You, Abba, Father, for
loving me and giving me increase according to Your definition
alone. I praise Your Name, Adonai, my perfect provider...
"Simple Blessings"
Kevin Geoffrey
Messianic Mo'adiym Devotional
Messianic Jewish Devotionals For
Israel's Annual Feasts, Fasts, and Appointed Times
c.2007 Perfect Word Publishing
A Ministry of Perfect Word Ministries
According to Leviticus 23: 15 in the 50 days from Passover to Shavuot (Pentecost)
the Omer is counted. Wonder what this is all about? The Church definitely
needs to catch up! Host Christine Darg of The Jerusalem Channel looks
into this mystery that Jesus and His apostles knew all about.
No comments:
Post a Comment