Have you forgotten something? Something very important? Something so extremely vital and crucial that your very destiny hangs in the balance.
"It would be impossible for me to forget something that important," you argue. Yet I do know that because this is the month of January multitudes of people have done just that. It happens every January and gets progressively worse as the year unfolds. Just one short month ago it was the focus of everyone’s daily activity. People’s conscious and subconscious minds revolved around it. The opening and closing statements of most of their conversations expressed it’s relevance in their lives and their association with it was apparent to everyone. I’ve listened and watched intently and I see that this month they want to get on with their lives and not get too fanatical. Their comments have been, "I’m just so glad it’s over."
I am not concerned about anyone forgetting Christmas ---- but it is the Christ in Christmas that is essential to your very existence and more importantly to your fate for all eternity. He definitely needs to be resurrected in some of your lives if you’ve tucked Him away with the tinsel and lights and not given Him another thought.
It happens easily. Too easily. It was the same with the children of Israel in the dessert when Moses went up the mountain. He wasn’t gone even 40 days before they managed to create a god according to their own specifications and of their own design. A god in the form of a golden calf that did not require anything of them. They could party all night and do as they pleased. They even built an altar and brought their offerings and played church. They were the ones making the rules and calling the shots. Even their pastor, Aaron, fell into this lapsidasical religiosity.
Scripture records that when God saw these stiff-necked people corrupting themselves He wanted to wipe them off the face of the earth. But thank heaven for us and for them that our God is a merciful God. He responded when Moses prayed for mercy for those people. When they turned back to Him, God embraced them again as His very own. He always responds to prayer and repentance.
Oh, there were consequences to their rebellion. There are always consequences to sin. Immorality produces VD and aids. Substance abuse brings on disease and premature death. Bitterness and resentment drieth the bones and causes arthritis. Stress, which is the opposite of faith, causes diabetes and the list goes on and on and on. But even at the point of death, God can reverse the situation and miraculously restore body and soul and spirit. He does it all the time. We need only to turn to Him and ask.
When Moses asked, "Who is on the Lord’s side?" he was not just asking a hypothetical question. There was a choice to be made because God was and is looking for a people that will make a decisive decision and turn from their complacency and live as the children of God entirely sold out to Him.
God warns again and again and again, "Beware that thou forget not the Lord thy God."
You see, those Israelites had not wanted to come to the mountain of God. They were content to watch from afar and not get too involved. They left it up to Moses to deal with God and to tell them what God was saying, instead of hearing God for themselves. That is why when Moses briefly split from the scene, they lost their heads. They almost lost their souls.
Moses explained it this way to them: "And now, people called by God, what doth the Lord thy God require of thee, but to fear the Lord thy God, to walk in all His ways, and to love Him, and to serve the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul and to keep the commandments of the Lord and His statues, which I command thee this day for your own good." (Deut. 10:12)
Did you notice the part about ‘for your own good’?
Joshua sums it up nicely; "Choose you this day whom ye will serve." (Joshua 24:15) It’s really for your own good!
Copyright Donna Martonfi www.psalm40ministries.com
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