Deuteronomy 5-7; Luke 3

“So be careful to do what the LORD your God has commanded you; do not turn aside to the right or to the left. Walk in all the way that the LORD your God has commanded you, so that you may live and prosper and prolong your days in the land that you will possess.” (Deuteronomy 5:32-33).

I’ve known the Ten Commandments for as long as I can remember. They were ingrained into me as a little girl. They’ve been listed before me so many times, that I’ve started to forget how important they really are. Out of all the rules and laws, these ten were what God saw as the most important. They were the laws he wanted to set down for all generations to follow. Why? Because He knew that his people were an imperfect people in an imperfect world.

I like to thin that I’ve always kept the Ten Commandments, but that’s untrue. I slip up in one area or another on a regular basis. Without realizing it, I often put things before my God. This could be in a relationship, a hobby, a book, or even time spent in the internet. When I value these things above God, I am in fact “worshiping” them as a god. Ouch. I had a tough time even writing that last sentence, but it’s oh so true. For me it’s a daily battle of giving up myself and focusing on my Saviour instead. I’ll leave you today with a rather long passage of scripture that is oh so dear to me. Please, read through these scriptures, and contemplate the daily struggles of your life and then claim victory from them in Christ Jesus:

^“But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith. I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead.

Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus” (Philippines 3:7-4).